NON-HUMAN STAKEHOLDERS: TESTING THE BOUNDARIES OF STAKEHOLDER THEORY.
In: Oklahoma Law Review, Jg. 76 (2024), Heft 2, S. 229-267
Online
academicJournal
Zugriff:
Stakeholder theory has gained widespread popularity in corporate governance rhetoric. However, this theory’s adoption has been accompanied by a correspondingly expansive interpretation of who should be counted as a stakeholder. Many modern stakeholder theorists argue for including the environment and non-human animals (“animals”) as stakeholders. This Article provides a valuable framework for assessing the feasibility of these additions. This Article concludes that including the environment and animals as stakeholders in an analysis of stakeholder ethics is largely untenable. Given the inability to ascertain preferences from animals and the environment, the highly subjective practice of attempting to quantify the benefits and harms attributable to business decisions, and the even more subjective nature of trying to weigh these benefits and harms across broad categories provides such broad latitude that nearly anything could be posited as ethical. With no limiting principle, including these non-human stakeholders creates an arbitrary ethical framework where corporate decision makers are empowered to justify a broad range of behaviors as ethical—a dangerous proposition in corporate America. This analysis comes at a valuable time as we are at a critical juncture given the convergence of large-scale agriculture, shifting paradigms regarding corporate ethics, and a world population approaching eight billion. For these reasons, this Article serves as a catalyst to spark future research into this subject specifically and the broader subjects of corporate ethics and stakeholder theory generally. With the rise of Environmental and Social Governance (“ESG”) investing and increasing numbers of firms supporting stakeholder-based initiatives, this issue will no doubt increase in significance throughout the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Titel: |
NON-HUMAN STAKEHOLDERS: TESTING THE BOUNDARIES OF STAKEHOLDER THEORY.
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | BLOUNT, JUSTIN ; CONKLIN, MICHAEL |
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Zeitschrift: | Oklahoma Law Review, Jg. 76 (2024), Heft 2, S. 229-267 |
Veröffentlichung: | 2024 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
ISSN: | 0030-1752 (print) |
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