Hermsen, Genaud (2025) Stakeholder perceptions on shareholder value creation in sustainable businesses: implications for the paradox between sustainable business practices and shareholder value creation. Master thesis, Sustainable Entrepreneurship (SE).
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Abstract
This study aims to understand how stakeholders perceive shareholder value creation within sustainable businesses and researches to what extent the stakeholders perceive shareholder value creation as contingent on the business’ ability to integrate sustainability. Drawing on capitalism, paradox theory, institutional theory, and stakeholder salience, the study introduces inherent tensions between sustainable business practices and shareholder value creation and aims to find how stakeholders position themselves within these trade-offs. The theory also suggests why stakeholder perceptions might be relevant for the navigation of such a paradox. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders from seven different top 15% overall scoring B-corporations, from where the data was analysed by combining both deductive and inductive approaches and resulted in 71 micro-themes that clustered into six overarching domains. The stakeholders recognized the inherent trade-offs between shareholder value creation and sustainable business practices, providing insights on their perceptions on the relationship between monetary profit and sustainability. Stakeholders emphasized acceptance and fairness in shareholder value creation as moderate salary, but had negative perceptions on an emphasize on shareholder value creation. This was due to the fact that this emphasize on shareholder value creation can undermine the company’s mission, which stakeholders demanded to be transparent and authentic. This had consequences on the stakeholder’s perception on investor relationships and additional management of these inherent tensions. The research concludes that sustainable companies should accept the trade-offs between sustainable business practices and shareholder value creation, adopt to mission-central governance, and align the investors to the company mission if the company aims to take stakeholder perceptions into account when navigating these inherent tensions.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Name supervisor: | Faber, N.R. and Cardoso Chrispim, M. |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Jul 2025 07:42 |
| Last Modified: | 14 Jul 2025 07:42 |
| URI: | https://campus-fryslan.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/693 |
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