Stakeholder engagement has grown into a widely used yet often unclear construct in business and society research. The literature lacks a unified understanding of the essentials of stakeholder engagement, and the fragmented use of the stakeholder engagement construct challenges its development and legitimacy. The purpose of this article is to clarify the construct of stakeholder engagement to unfold the full potential of stakeholder engagement research. We conduct a literature review on 90 articles in leading academic journals focusing on stakeholder engagement in the business and society, management and strategy, and environmental management and environmental policy literatures. We present a descriptive analysis of stakeholder engagement research for a 15-year period, and we identify the moral, strategic, and pragmatic components of stakeholder engagement as well as its aims, activities, and impacts. Moreover, we offer an inclusive stakeholder engagement definition and provide a guide to organizing the research. Finally, we complement the current understanding with a largely overlooked dark side of stakeholder engagement. We conclude with future research avenues for stakeholder engagement research.

利益相关者参与已经发展成为商业和社会研究中广泛使用但通常不清楚的结构。文献缺乏对利益相关者参与要素的统一理解，利益相关者参与结构的碎片化使用对其发展和合法性提出了挑战。本文的目的是阐明利益相关者参与的构建，以发挥利益相关者参与研究的全部潜力。我们对领先学术期刊上的 90 篇文章进行了文献综述，重点关注利益相关者在商业和社会中的参与、管理和战略以及环境管理和环境政策文献。我们对 15 年的利益相关者参与研究进行了描述性分析，我们确定了道德、战略、利益相关者参与的实际组成部分及其目标、活动和影响。此外，我们提供了一个包容性的利益相关者参与定义，并提供了组织研究的指南。最后，我们用在很大程度上被忽视的利益相关者参与的阴暗面来补充当前的理解。我们总结了利益相关者参与研究的未来研究途径。