Stakeholder theory has become an influential framework for addressing organizational challenges, including those related to sustainability. Yet, the inclusion of nonhuman stakeholders in stakeholder theory is complicated by ontological and epistemological obstacles. To overcome these, we turn to art and posthumanist practice theory and examine artist-led practices by focusing on the projects of two pioneering eco-artists, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. In this way we identify the ontological and epistemological challenges that impede the inclusion of nonhumans into stakeholder theory, (...) showing that artist-led practices allow for the inclusion of nonhuman stakeholders in two ways: (1) by specifying the temporal, spatial, and outcome distinctions that ontologically hinder their inclusion; and (2) by explicating the reframing of knowing and the emotional and imaginative dimensions of knowing that epistemologically enable their inclusion. We expand on the theorizing of nonhuman stakeholder inclusion by understanding the inclusion of nonhumans, first, not as a fixed state that is to be achieved but rather as one that materializes and gains meaning through specific practices of knowing; and, second, not as merely the absence of exclusion but rather as a dynamic interplay, where inclusion and exclusion mutually constitute one another. By advancing stakeholder theory’s theorizing and understandings of inclusion and exclusion, we also respond to urgent and contemporary environmental challenges. (shrink)

Mining partnerships have often been promoted as opportunities for meaningful collaboration between corporations and Indigenous communities. However, these partnerships frequently lack a nuanced understanding of the colonial assumptions that underpin power imbalances and divergent perspectives. This study addresses this gap by examining how a multinational mining corporation, Indigenous communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representing these communities (de)legitimize their mining partnerships within the framework of global stakeholder colonialism in Australia and Mongolia. The study shows how stakeholder colonialism coerces Indigenous communities into (...) accepting a social reality where mining is inevitable, either with or without partnerships. This dynamic reflects the hegemonic power of mining corporations, which is sustained not by a balance of coercion and consent but by discursive coercion without consent. This implies that there is a failure of this hegemonic power to fully establish itself, opening the door for subaltern resistance and counter-hegemonic struggles by Indigenous peoples. By highlighting Indigenous perspectives that challenge the prevailing managerial views in mining corporations, this study disrupts the corporate narrative that portrays the sole social objectivity where mining is inevitable. Instead, it advocates for a more nuanced understanding that goes beyond a simplistic view of mining partnerships as either naïve democratic deliberation or fatalistic stakeholder colonialism. (shrink)

Based on a qualitative study of Copenhagen 2021 WorldPride, this article explores collaboration between the local organiser and its corporate partners, focusing on the tensions involved in this collaboration, which emerge from and uphold relations between the extremes of unethical pinkwashing, on the one hand, and ethical purity, on the other. Here, pinkwashing is understood as a looming risk, and purity as an unrealizable ideal. As such, corporate sponsorships of Pride are conceptualized as inherently impure—and productive because of their very (...) impurity rather than despite it. Analytically, we identify and explore three productive tensions where the first involves emergent normativities for what constitutes good, right, or proper corporate engagement in Pride, the second revolves around queer(ed) practices and products that open normativities, and the third centres on the role of internal LGBTI+ employee-driven networks whose activism pushes organisations to become further involved in Pride, developing aspirational solidarity. Reading across literatures on corporate activism and queer organisation, we introduce Alexis Shotwell’s notion of constitutive impurity to suggest that the potential for ethical corporate Pride partnerships arises when accepting the risk of pinkwashing rather than seeking to overcome it. (shrink)