Stakeholder relations and financial performance

We analyze how shareholder performance can be associated with stakeholder relations. As such, we try to find out whether there is an association between financial performance and stakeholder relations with respect to different theoretical notions about the firm. Financial performance is operationalized as the financial return of a firm's shares. For stakeholder relations, we look into community involvement, corporate governance, employee relations, environmental conduct, diversity of the workforce, human rights policies and product attributes. We find that the different components of stakeholder relations appear to be associated in a complex manner with shareholder performance. Therefore, it adds value to look closely into the details of stakeholder relations in connection with financial performance. Copyright (C)3 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.