Popis: |
The article tests the stakeholder management theory in the case of Serbia, a country where modern corporate social responsibility practice was introduced relatively recently, despite rich tradition of philanthropy. To validate the theory, we formulated three hypotheses, assuming that stakeholder management is predominantly used as a PR tool, that stronger corporate governance correlates with developed CSR function within the organisation and that regulated industries such as researched examples of construction and banking demonstrate more advanced stakeholder management. These hypotheses were examined against the available literature review and a comprehensive empirical study (desk research, online survey and in-depth interviews with business managers, compared with best European practice). We have shown that the financial sector places most emphasis on its customers, whilst the construction sector (cement industry) sets the local community and employees in the cornerstone of its business operations, in line with international practice. However, public relations or marketing sector are primarly engaged with stakeholders' relationship in Serbia from a company's image perspective, lacking understanding the stakeholder role in business performance improvement, which indicates a lower level of development and early stage in transition to best European union practices. |