Stakes and Stakeholders in the Climate Casino

Abstract

This essay advances a critique of the stakeholder concept based on the relative function of stakes and stakeholders in games of risk and reward such as roulette, cockfighting, and, if economists are right, climate negotiations. It asks what happens when corporate sustainability and other market-based “solutions” to socio-ecological crises such as climate change and mass extinction are perceived as a kind of casino. Dispossessed stakeholders become background props at sustainability conferences and other events where dramatic doom-and-gloom narratives of catastrophe serve as a way to reinforce global geographies of power and extraction. Being honest about the effects of categorizing such diverse actors as stakeholders or, alternatively, being clear about what exactly the word stakeholder means in terms of power and responsibility, is an important step in reaffirming the agency of the communities who stand to lose the most in the anthropocene.

这篇文章提出了一个对利益相关者概念的批判，基于利益相关者和利益相关者在风险和回报游戏中的相对作用，如轮盘赌、斗鸡，如果经济学家是正确的，还有气候谈判. 它的问题是，当企业可持续性和其他基于市场的“解决方案”被视为社会生态危机(如气候变化和物种大灭绝)的赌场时，会发生什么. 一无所有的利益相关者成为可持续发展会议和其他活动的背景道具，在这些会议和活动中，对灾难的戏剧化、末日般的叙述，成为一种强化全球权力版图和开采的方式. 诚实对分类的影响利益相关者等多元化的演员或者,或者,清楚什么利益相关者这个词意味着权力和责任而言,是一个重要的步骤在重申该机构的社区在人类世的损失最大.

En este ensayo se avanza en una crítica del concepto de depositario de apuestas con base en la función relativa de las apuestas y los depositarios en juegos de azar y de premios, tales como la ruleta, las peleas de gallos y, si los economistas tienen razón, las negociaciones sobre el clima. Se pregunta sobre lo que ocurre cuando la sustentabilidad empresarial y otras “soluciones” basadas en el mercado para enfrentar crisis socio-ecológicas, tales como el cambio climático y las extinciones en masa, se perciben como un tipo de casino. Los depositarios de apuestas desposeídos se convierten en soportes tras bambalinas en las conferencias sobre sustentabilidad y otros eventos donde las narrativas dramáticas y pesimistas de las catástrofes sirven de medio para reforzar las geografías globales de poder y extracción. Ser honesto acerca de los efectos de categorizar actores tan diversos como los depositarios o, de modo alternativo, ser claro acerca de qué significa exactamente la palabra depositario en términos de poder y responsabilidad, es un paso importante para reafirmar la agencia de las comunidades que están expuestas a ser las mayores perdedoras en el Antropoceno.

Key Words:

• corporate sustainability
• gambling
• risk
• stakeholder

关键词:

• 企业的可持续发展
• 赌博
• 的风险
• 利益相关者

Palabras clave:

• juegos de azar
• depositario de apuestas
• riesgo
• sustentabilidad corporativa

Acknowledgments

Research on sustainability certifications in the Kenyan tea supply chain was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark Cross-Council Committee through a Sapere Aude DFF starting grant (#7023-00115AB). I conducted this research as part of the SUSTEIN research project (www.sustein.org), which is hosted by the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School (2018–2021). I’m grateful to my colleagues Hannah Elliott and Martin Skrydstrup (PI) for helping create a collaborative space for thinking and writing. Fieldwork in Geneva was funded by the Fulbright Commission and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, as well as the MacMillan Center at Yale University. Thoughtful comments and constructive critiques from two anonymous reviewers and the editor, Deborah Dixon, substantially improved my arguments, and I’m grateful to GeoHumanities for a providing a venue for publishing this kind of essay.

Notes

1. This paper had been cited nearly 14,000 citations as of 24 February 2020, according to Google Scholar. When I wrote the first draft of this paper in the spring of 2019, the paper had less than 13,000 citations, suggesting it is still an exceedingly popular approach in stakeholder theory.

2. This page has been recently edited. In May 2019, the same page had a picture of a woman in what appeared to be traditional Bolivian dress harvesting grain alone in a field. The current link in the bibliography was archived on 2 March 2020.

3. A cupping is when a coffee roaster provides samples to potential buyers. The roaster sets out cups of freshly brewed coffee with little placquards with information about the coffees’ origins and tasting notes. Buyers dip metal spoons into each cup of coffee and loudly slirp it, which aerates the coffee and spreads it across the palate. Novice slirpers often get choked.

4. In the time between submitting this article and its publication, the WFTO seems to have moved this page into its “members only” area.

5. That’s not to say that researchers in these disciplines have not also occasionally embraced game theoretic models to make sense of things like local property and land rights disputes (see, for example, Butler and Gates 2012). Nor is it to say that all orthodox economists ignores local conditions or foregoes ethnographic and other qualitative methods (see, for example, Conley and Udry 2010; Hanna, Duflo, and Greenstone 2016).

6. A caveat: Geertz notes that sore losers might actually lose status permanently, which is more evidence that the game is designed to reinforce existing structures and relationships rather than really, materially change them. The same could be said of corporate sustainability, where a wrong word or bad attitude can push the stakes from the realm of symbolism to materiality (cf. Souleles and Scroggins 2017, 97). As an example of this, I attended a conference where a former energy executive recounted how he had promoted clean energy too aggressively in his company, and had been sanctioned by his company’s board members. In advancing his own interests ahead of the company’s, he had flaunted the “rules of the game” and the rules of society they correspond to and reinforce. Thus, the stakes for this executive became very real, very quickly. (He was fired.) There are also people gambling in the climate casino who have real stakes at play, such as the leaders of nations like Vanuatu whose pleas at global climate negotiations have been largely ignored. This, too, bolsters capital’s interests.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Archer

MATTHEW ARCHER is an assistant professor in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected]. His current research focuses on sustainability as a technology of governance in global value chains, which he approaches through the lenses of political ecology, anthropology, and environmental humanities.