The Risks in Relying on Stakeholder Engagement for the Achievement of Sustainability

This paper examines the vaunted potential of stakeholder engagement for achieving sustainability, in theory and in practice. It identifies considerable risks inherent in relying on stakeholder engagement for the achievement of sustainability including misguided assumptions around stakeholder priorities in respect of sustainability, and around business interests in always acting to resolve stakeholder concerns. Stakeholder engagement is argued to be a mechanism that in a normative sense may be able to assist business in rethinking its interests in favor of sustainability, but if oversold or implemented instrumentally merely to legitimate 'business as usual', it is shown to represent an ill-fated panacea.

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