Reassembling Ecologies: Or How the Natural Environment May Qualify as a Stakeholder in the Firm's Business Environment

In its general form, stakeholder theory posits an extension of the ecology. It claims that there are other stakes and interests than those posited by shareholder value theory (Freeman et al. 2004; Jensen and Sandström 2011), and some stakeholder theory proponents argue that the natural environment is also to be considered as a stakeholder (Driscoll and Starik 2004; Norton 2007). It is a positive claim – there are more stakes and interests – and a moral one – we should look towards more interests in order to complete the analysis. With this framing, stakeholder theory seeks to identify stakes and interests which may be difficult but in principle achievable; it also seeks to make analysis of organized activity such as (global) business into a concern with the relative power of stakes and interests. These concerns are highly relevant but they face the barrier that if stakes and interests are positively there, the analysis becomes static and will pay less attention to both the formation and to power-effects of stakes and interest.