Join us at AoM 2025 for our OMT / STR Symposium: Balancing Stakeholder Inclusion and Shareholder Interests
Session 23471
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
12:00–1:30 PM CEST
Bella Center, Room MR19
This symposium seeks to contribute to advance the debate on stakeholder governance versus shareholder-centric governance by examining megaprojects, settings where stakeholder enfranchisement at scale is mandated by law. Megaprojects-spanning developments of energy and transport infrastructure, high-tech factories, and social assets-are unique contexts where stakeholders beyond traditional value chain actors hold legally endowed control rights. These rights aim to internalize externalities by compelling firms to address social and environmental concerns, aligning with stakeholder governance principles. However, mandated stakeholder inclusion often conflicts with project management norms prioritizing cost control and shareholder value, creating tensions that undermine efficiency and discourage investment in essential infrastructure. The symposium builds on a special issue to be published in California Management Review in the summer 2025, highlighting innovative managerial and governance approaches to address these challenges. It aims to: (1) develop actionable frameworks for balancing mandated stakeholder inclusion with shareholder value, (2) analyze social arrangements that mitigate harms from business activity while serving public interests, and (3) extend insights from megaproject governance to broader corporate contexts. By illustrating how legal mandates transform governance dynamics, forcing trade-offs between efficiency and fairness, the symposium highlights the challenges of operationalizing stakeholder enfranchisement at scale, including agency problems, cost uncertainties, and tensions with shareholder-centric valuation models.We reveal how stakeholder enfranchisement at scale reconfigures resource allocation, value distribution, and dispute resolution, with the aim to generate actionable insights for balancing inclusivity and economic performance in stakeholder-intensive contexts.
Speakers & Discussants:
Nuno Gil (University of Manchester), William Schulze (University of Utah)
Presentations include:
Sustainability and Real Options
Author: Han Smit, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Chipping Away at a Grand Challenge
Author: Nuno Gil, The University of Manchester
Author: Maria Cristina Sousa, The University of Manchester
Author: Felipe Massa, University of Vermont
Value Pathways in Emergent Programs
Author: Jonas Söderlund, BI Norwegian Business School
Author: Ermal Hetemi, Linnaeus University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Author: Sofia Pemsel, Copenhagen Business School
Major Program Value Creation and Capture
Author: Marc Ventresca, University of Oxford
We welcome scholars interested in stakeholder theory, governance, megaprojects, and hybrid organizing to join this timely conversation.
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Ermal Hetemi
Assistant Professor
Department of Management
LNU School of Business
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden