Stakeholder involvement in Human Resource Management practices : evidence from Italy

The increasing reference to stakeholder theory in the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature advocates the integration of a wide set of stakeholders for managerial, ethical and analytical reasons. This paper contributes to the advancement of stakeholder-oriented HRM by exploring how Italian human resource (HR) managers perceive the actual involvement levels of eleven internal and external stakeholders, and their views on how to improve them. Data were collected from a survey and ensuing focus group discussions. The survey gauged the extent to which different stakeholders are involved in designing various HR processes, while the focus groups explored what actions can be taken to foster a stakeholder orientation in HRM. The two phases of the study involved 30 HR managers from Italian companies with the highest capitalization on the Milan stock exchange; in total, the companies involved had more than 750,000 employees. The discussion of the findings is followed by identification of specific directions for future research.