Incorporating stakeholder perspective into entrepreneurship research

Starting from the assumption that entrepreneurship does not occur in a vacuum but the external environment has relevant impacts on the entrepreneurial activity and is in turn affected by it, the paper aims at exploiting the relational side of entrepreneurship proposing the stakeholder theory of the firm as a bridge between entrepreneurship and business in society research. It adopts a dual perspective considering the external environment as either an antecedent or as a receptor for entrepreneurial outcomes. The contribution of stakeholder theory to entrepreneurship is presented both in general terms using the concept of value as the common basis shared by the two fields and detailing the analysis along the three broad perspectives on stakeholder approach: normative, descriptive and instrumental lenses.