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Introduction
Along with the boom of Chinese hotel industry, and the state-owned hotels reduction ([49] Kong et al. , 2010), to survive in this massive competition, managing multiple stakeholder relationships become one of the most imperative challenges to hotels' in China when they used to focus on maintaining single stakeholder relationship with the hotel owner (the states or government) only. Globalization has expanded the business environment into a network of multiple stakeholder groups. As modern strategic management has emerged, the stakeholder perspective has played a prominent role in strategy and performance discussions ([35] Harrison et al. , 2010). The general denominator of stakeholder theory/management arguments concerns whether firms should adopt a spacious strategy perspective that incorporates the demands and needs of various stakeholder groups to improve its performance ([19] de Luque et al. , 2008; [30] Godfrey, 2005; [93] Sisodia et al. , 2007). Researchers have claimed that a firm's performance can be enhanced by emphasizing its relationship with its key stakeholders ([44] Jones and Wicks, 1999; [23] Donaldson and Preston, 1999; [42] Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001; [89] Rodgers and Gago, 2004; [61] McVea and Freeman, 2005), which may aid the firm in acquiring and developing valuable competitive resources ([26] Dyer and Singh, 1998; [31] Gulati et al. , 2000).
Based on the theoretical foundation of stakeholder literature, [84] Post et al. (2002b) formally developed a new perspective in strategic management, the so-called stakeholder view (SHV), which states that the long-term survival and success of a firm is determined by its ability to establish and maintain relationships with its critical stakeholders ([83] Post et al. , 2002a). They have verified their SHV theory using three case studies (Motorola, Royal Dutch Shell, and Cummins/Monsanto). Nevertheless, in the framework of SHV and other stakeholder management literature, there is a lack of information on positive key stakeholder relationship cultivation, such as the sequence of relationship formation constructs and how these constructs enhance stakeholder management practices and lead to superior organizational performance.
To bridge the gap in the existing literature, the objectives of the present paper were twofold. The first was to identify critical stakeholders in the hospitality industry based on their importance and contribution to business performance. The second was to develop and empirically test a stakeholder relationship...