Responsible Leadership and Stakeholder Management: Influence Pathways and Organizational Outcomes

The construct of responsible leadership has gained considerable traction in contemporary management scholarship. Yet defining and operationalizing how responsible leadership manifests in organizational outcomes has posed challenges. In this paper, we draw from stakeholder theory to offer a more fully formed view of how responsible leadership influences organizational processes and outcomes. We provide descriptions of two distinct pathways through which leaders and their organizations exhibit and project their responsible leadership behaviors and actions: psychological and knowledge-based. We suggest that these two pathways constitute process mechanisms that advance and disseminate specific signals and messages and, ultimately, actions and outcomes. We provide brief illustrations of three companies and their leaders to underscore the potential of our framework. We conclude with implications for research and practice.