TY - JOUR
T1 - Human–Animal Relations in Business and Society: Advancing the Feminist Interpretation of Stakeholder Theory
AU - Tallberg, Linda
AU - García-Rosell, Jose-Carlos
AU - Haanpää, Minni
PY - 2021/5/21
Y1 - 2021/5/21
N2 - Stakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors.
AB - Stakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors.
KW - 512 Business and Management
KW - Animals
KW - Affective embodiment
KW - Ethics of Care
KW - Stakeholder theory
KW - Ethnography
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106403211&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10551-021-04840-1
DO - 10.1007/s10551-021-04840-1
M3 - Article
SN - 0167-4544
JO - Journal of Business Ethics
JF - Journal of Business Ethics
ER -