Little attention has been paid to the importance of social media in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This deficit is redressed in the present paper through utilizing the notion of ‘citizenship arenas’ to identify three dynamics in social media-augmented corporate–society relations. First, we note that social media-augmented ‘corporate arenas of citizenship’ are constructed by individual corporations in an effort to address CSR issues of specific importance thereto, and are populated by individual citizens as well as (functional/formally organized) stakeholders. Second, (...) we highlight that, within social media-augmented ‘public arenas of citizenship’, individual citizens are empowered, relative to corporations and their (functional/formally organized) stakeholders, when it comes to creating, debating, and publicizing, CSR-relevant issues. Third, we posit that information and communication technology corporations possess specific, and potentially very important, capacities, when it comes to creating, or helping construct, public arenas of citizenship from within which individual citizens can influence their broader political–economic environment. Following this, we discuss how social media can contribute to ‘dysfunctions’ as well as ‘progressions’ in corporate–society relations, and conclude with a number of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between stakeholder management and international diversification. We differentiate between strengths and concerns in stakeholder management to demonstrate the differential effects of the two aspects of stakeholder management. Previous research on stakeholder theory often focuses on the importance of stakeholder relations, trying to build a business case of relational capital that results from strong stakeholder management. Such a relational approach, however, overlooks the process of managing stakeholders, a process that allows firms with strengths in stakeholder management (...) to develop an important capability of managing tensions. In this study, we argue that this capability, an inherent part of stakeholder management, can be critical when firms face increased complexity during the process of international diversification. We therefore propose that strengths in stakeholder management are positively related to international diversification, while concerns in stakeholder management are negatively related to international diversification. Using panel data for 169 US multinational firms over a 10‐year period, we find support that strengths in stakeholder management facilitate international diversification. We discuss the contributions of our findings to stakeholder theory and international business research. (shrink)