Bittersweet Symphony: A Music Theory Approach to Stakeholder Dissonance and Value Creation

Stakeholder theory emphasizes value creation for diverse stakeholders, yet it offers limited guidance for understanding how value is created when a firm’s and a stakeholder’s values differ. We reconceptualize firm–stakeholder relationships as dynamic processes in which value accumulates through the engagement and resolution of value dissonance. Drawing on tonal harmony from music theory, we develop a framework that treats dissonance not as a defect to be eliminated but as generative pressure for value creation. The framework evaluates value dissonance at the issue level and aggregates tension at the relationship level, enabling systematic assessment of where firms can productively intervene. We then theorize three mechanisms through which firms convert dissonance into value: managerial intervention, structural resolution, and timing. Our central insight is that value emerges from the sequenced movement between tension and release. This dynamic perspective advances stakeholder theory by explaining how value can be created across the full stakeholder portfolio, including relationships that firms might otherwise avoid, suppress, or attempt to force into alignment.