Knowing through Artist-led Practices for the Inclusion of Nature as a Stakeholder

Abstract

Stakeholder theory has become an influential framework for addressing current managerial and organizational challenges, including issues related to sustainability. Stakeholder research has suggested that nonhuman nature can be included as an organizational stakeholder in addition to the human stakeholders. This article answers recent calls to identify alternative ways of knowing and examine how they can advance the (non-anthropocentric) inclusion of nonhuman stakeholders in organizational activities. We turn to art and examine artist-led practices by focusing on the projects of two pioneering eco-artists, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison. We suggest that artist-led practices, firstly, expose the temporal, spatial, and transformative aspects of the human-nonhuman distinction that hinder nonhuman stakeholder inclusion, and secondly, provide propositional, emotional, and imaginative ways of knowing that are necessary for challenging and overcoming the distinction. The article contributes to stakeholder theory by providing a non-anthropocentric way of knowing and including nature as a stakeholder. This advances the practical applicability of stakeholder theory to respond to urgent environmental challenges.