Participating By Choice or Command? When Ideals of Stakeholder Engagement Clash With a Prevailing Strategy Discourse
研究揭示了利益相关者参与中开放与控制之间的悖论，提出三种参与模式（包容、准入、准参与），并指出主流战略话语可能将参与用作控制手段，阻碍组织战略制定。
Extant studies on stakeholder engagement have noted the inherent tensions arising from participation efforts, giving rise to the dark side of engagement. However, few studies have focused on organizational power relations that provide specific conditions for engagement and the related paradox that control represents. Drawing on strategy discourse and paradox as theoretical lenses, we examine engagement as a nexus of observed societal expectations, subjectivities provided by the strategy discourse, and the subject positions adopted by the individuals, giving rise to a contradiction between openness and control. As a result, we present three modes of participation: inclusion, admittance, and quasi-participation. We contribute to stakeholder engagement and paradox literature by outlining the “engagement-control paradox” and showing how the prevailing strategy discourse may drive the use of participation as a form of control. Maintaining different modes of participation introduces inadvertent closure for participation and hinders strategy-making and the development of the organization.