Agenda-building Theory: A Stakeholder Salience Approach for Determining Agenda Placement

Management within an organization is constantly faced with decisions regarding the interests of the constituents or stakeholders of the firm. Every stakeholder’s interests cannot possibly be dealt with equitably by an organization due to constraints upon available resources. Thus, decisions must be made regarding the priority of competing stakeholder claims. This paper considers this important stakeholder management dilemma by applying a stakeholder theory of salience to agenda-building theory. Propositions regarding the relationship among salience, the issue dimensions, and utilization of symbols in the issue expansion process are offered. Based on these propositions, a revised agenda-building model is presented, which joins the attributes of stakeholder salience with the basic components of agenda setting to demonstrate when decision-makers are forced to cope with a stakeholder issue.