Theorizing Organizational Benevolence

Abstract

We extend research on stakeholder orientation by introducing and conceptualizing “organizational benevolence”—a notion that refers to a firm’s inclination to pursue the welfare of an external stakeholder group as an end in itself manifested in a behavioral tendency in which benefiting the “other” is the ultimate goal of action. Employing a microfoundational approach, we propose a theoretical framework and a process model that explain how firms develop such a posture and how it eventually can become an enduring feature of these organizations. We build our framework on the core notion of collective commitment to the well-being of an external constituency by elaborating on the processes through which such collective commitment is mobilized, translated into collective intention, and stabilized in a behavioral tendency. Our article develops several propositions highlighting the crucial roles that emotionality and rhetoric play in these processes, alongside an enabling sociocognitive infrastructure. Overall, our work goes substantially beyond current theorizing and provides a detailed account for why some firms not founded with a prosocial mission nonetheless act consistently to benefit an external constituency in the absence of instrumental reasons to do so.