(Normative) Stakeholder Theory in the Prevalent Rational Market Paradigm

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 28: State, market, civil society

Abstract

Stakeholders and communities can assume a more integral role in enacting their purposes in organizations through alternative organizing. However, the difficulty stems from the performativity of the market and the exclusion of purposes from the market paradigm on which most stakeholder theories are based. A rigid structure of transactions that reinforces the prevalent market norm prevents theorizing of critical enablers for purposive organizing with an alternative norm; yet, a normative stakeholder theory for purposive organizing may only be completed by incorporating “unanticipated consequences of purposive action”. In a thought experiment where transacting partners are not bound to exchange in the transactional way, we theorize and demonstrate that a just norm could emerge through optimization of collective values. We aspire to advance an alternative normative account for emancipating a “reimagined future” in the stakeholder approach.

Author

• Eugene Yi Cheong Tung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong