The Business of Being You: How Social Media Influencers Manage Stakeholder Relationships for Long-Term Success
(2025) BUSN09 20251Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- In the evolving landscape of digital entrepreneurship, social media influencers (SMIs) have emerged as strategic actors navigating complex stakeholder environments to sustain long-term business viability. While existing literature extensively addresses branding, authenticity, and audience engagement, it often overlooks the strategic coordination required to manage stakeholder relationships across platforms, brands, audiences, and the influencers themselves. This thesis addresses that gap by conceptualizing SMIs as entrepreneurial micro-enterprises operating within platform-mediated ecosystems. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory and its contemporary extensions, the study explores how SMIs balance competing demands in decentralized,... (More)
- In the evolving landscape of digital entrepreneurship, social media influencers (SMIs) have emerged as strategic actors navigating complex stakeholder environments to sustain long-term business viability. While existing literature extensively addresses branding, authenticity, and audience engagement, it often overlooks the strategic coordination required to manage stakeholder relationships across platforms, brands, audiences, and the influencers themselves. This thesis addresses that gap by conceptualizing SMIs as entrepreneurial micro-enterprises operating within platform-mediated ecosystems. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory and its contemporary extensions, the study explores how SMIs balance competing demands in decentralized, algorithm-driven environments.
To fulfill this research purpose, a qualitative research study was conducted, through executing seven semi-structured interviews with commercially active SMIs. The findings of this research indicate that SMI work is characterized by overlapping stakeholder demands. Due to the absence of formalized structures, SMIs rely predominantly on adaptive and relational strategies to manage professional viability. Moreover, the findings identify three core stakeholder management strategies: (1) maintaining connection without overexposure, (2) monetizing without compromising authenticity, and (3) governance in the absence of formal structures to sustain business viability - each comprising distinct practices undertaken to achieve the goals of the strategy. However, the thesis argues that these strategies can only be meaningfully understood when situated within the broader stakeholder ecosystem in which SMIs are embedded. In response, the thesis contributes to existing theory by proposing the Stakeholder-as-Ecosystem model and introducing the concept of the Self/Actor Split, both of which reconceptualize SMIs as simultaneously stakeholders and stakeholder managers in a decentralized, emotionally intensive, and visibility-driven environment.
To what extent these practices can be formalized, scaled, or transferred across different industries, cultural contexts, and tiers of influence represents an important opportunity for future research, particularly in testing and refining the concepts of internal stakeholder management and the Stakeholder-as-Ecosystem model within the broader creator economy. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9208698
- author
- Andsberg, Petra LU and Barragán, Melissa LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN09 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Stakeholder Theory, Social Media Influencers, Creator Economy, Digital Entrepreneurship, Platform Labor, Informal Governance, Authenticity, Stakeholder Ecosystem
- language
- English
- id
- 9208698
- date added to LUP
- 2025-07-11 08:18:10
- date last changed
- 2025-07-11 08:18:10
@misc{9208698,
abstract = {{In the evolving landscape of digital entrepreneurship, social media influencers (SMIs) have emerged as strategic actors navigating complex stakeholder environments to sustain long-term business viability. While existing literature extensively addresses branding, authenticity, and audience engagement, it often overlooks the strategic coordination required to manage stakeholder relationships across platforms, brands, audiences, and the influencers themselves. This thesis addresses that gap by conceptualizing SMIs as entrepreneurial micro-enterprises operating within platform-mediated ecosystems. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory and its contemporary extensions, the study explores how SMIs balance competing demands in decentralized, algorithm-driven environments.
To fulfill this research purpose, a qualitative research study was conducted, through executing seven semi-structured interviews with commercially active SMIs. The findings of this research indicate that SMI work is characterized by overlapping stakeholder demands. Due to the absence of formalized structures, SMIs rely predominantly on adaptive and relational strategies to manage professional viability. Moreover, the findings identify three core stakeholder management strategies: (1) maintaining connection without overexposure, (2) monetizing without compromising authenticity, and (3) governance in the absence of formal structures to sustain business viability - each comprising distinct practices undertaken to achieve the goals of the strategy. However, the thesis argues that these strategies can only be meaningfully understood when situated within the broader stakeholder ecosystem in which SMIs are embedded. In response, the thesis contributes to existing theory by proposing the Stakeholder-as-Ecosystem model and introducing the concept of the Self/Actor Split, both of which reconceptualize SMIs as simultaneously stakeholders and stakeholder managers in a decentralized, emotionally intensive, and visibility-driven environment.
To what extent these practices can be formalized, scaled, or transferred across different industries, cultural contexts, and tiers of influence represents an important opportunity for future research, particularly in testing and refining the concepts of internal stakeholder management and the Stakeholder-as-Ecosystem model within the broader creator economy.}},
author = {{Andsberg, Petra and Barragán, Melissa}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The Business of Being You: How Social Media Influencers Manage Stakeholder Relationships for Long-Term Success}},
year = {{2025}},
}