Mapping Organized Crime as a Stakeholder: A Risk-Based and Responsive Governance Perspective

Organized crime (OC) can influence firms through coercion, collusion, financial ties, and supply-chain relationships, yet these interactions remain underexamined in stakeholder theory. This article conceptualizes organized crime as an analytically relevant but non-normatively legitimate stakeholder and develops a risk-based framework combining stakeholder salience, interface channel, interest level, and influence strategy. The framework specifies when OC is likely to command managerial attention and which configurations are expected to pose the greatest risks of value destruction and escalation. Three illustrative Italian cases involving preventive anti-mafia measures show variation from latent relational exposure, through indirect supply-chain contamination, to embedded ownership and financial control. By linking these configurations to graduated governance responses, the framework helps managers and regulators calibrate proportionate, revisable, and auditable interventions. It extends stakeholder theory to adversarial actors while clarifying institutional conditions that shape the credibility of prevention and remediation.