Towards Understanding Organizational Relationships with Stakeholders: Strategic Caring Construct

This study identifies and develops a new organizational construct, strategic caring, defined as actions taken by top managers with respect to stakeholder relationships to improve the well-being of both the stakeholders and an organization. This construct is based on a review of the multidisciplinary caring literature from which a definition of individual caring was developed through a systematic content analysis. This definition was then translated into an organizational-level construct by drawing upon various disciplines’ views on how organizations can and should respond to stakeholder demands and claims. Strategic caring focuses on the organization’s overall orientation towards its stakeholders and guides organizational leaders as they seek to meet a wide variety of stakeholder demands.