Authors: Andreas Tsalas, Nikolaos Pentsas

Title: Stakeholders Management in the Defense Sector

Abstract

This study focuses specifically on how and why managers from defense industries might go about using stakeholder management in order to help their organizations meet their mandates, fulfill their missions, and create public value and, presents findings of stakeholder management survey of 12 defense corporations and 23 project managers from 8 countries.
The main object of this study is to explore whether there is any interest of strategic stakeholder management in the defense sector to determine whether stakeholder management procedures are important and to explore the main interests of defense companies regarding their stakeholder groups. . It is found that the most important stakeholder is considered the “employees” and the first business priority the “customers”. Our findings also suggest that managers in the defense sector, although they recognize the importance of the process, do not in reality implement stakeholder management processes.
Strategic Stakeholder Management concept-which can be considered as one of the neglected issues in the defense sector-is examined and consequently some suggestions are made in order to improve stakeholder management practices in the sector. Based on the findings, the study concludes with a number of recommendations for management research and practice.