12297: Mission impossible? Accounting for Invisible, Inaudible and Absent Stakeholders (session 26013)

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Stakeholder theory is widely adopted by academics and practitioners alike. However, its efforts to classify stakeholders into definitive categories can result in partial representations that overlook important aspects of stakeholders, and even, paradoxically, the complete omission of certain stakeholders, exactly an outcome the theory sought to avoid. We rethink stakeholder theory by placing the impossibility of mapping all stakeholders at its core. This impossibility suggests a need for continuous inquiry into who these stakeholders are, as some may be invisible (e.g., marginalized people), inaudible (e.g., nature), or absent (e.g., future generations). Drawing on the Latin American literature on Testimonio, we argue that a novel approach to stakeholder theory should not focus on stakeholder boxing but should instead guide a process of ‘disciplined inquiry’ on what those imperceptible or absent stakeholders may want, why and how, while accepting that our understanding of those stakeholders will ineluctably remain incomplete and partial. This inquiry should not only concern stakeholders in the present, but also those in the past (e.g., victims of slavery) and in the future (e.g., artificial intelligence). We offer a series of principles to guide this disciplined inquiry and draw the implications of this approach for management theory, ethics, and practice.

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