Abstract
Various stakeholders approach sustainability in their own way. How they do this is reflected in their discursive behaviour. The stakeholder groups explored here include Traditional Shareholders, Incentive-Coerced Management, Pro-Sustainability Corporate, and Activists. Each of these stakeholder groups is shown to engage in a unique discourse, which provides insight into how each approach sustainability. This paper draws on Foucault’s ideas to help understand these discourses in terms of a framework based on Harré’s positioning theory. A new level of understanding is derived about the different points of view about sustainability. Business leaders can harness this to improve how they approach sustainability.
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References
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Examples of those to have made use of Foucauldian ideas in this way include Clare Burton Subordination: feminism and social theory Sydney, George Allen and Unwin 1985, Wendy Hollway ‘Gender differences and the production of subjectivity’, in: J Henriques, W Hollway, C Urwin, L Venn and V Walkerdine (eds) Changing the Subject: Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity London, Methuen 1984 pp 227–263, Claire Murphy An Introduction to Christian Feminism Dublin, Dominican Publications 1994, Chris Weedon Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory Oxford, Basil Blackwell 1987, and Judith Butler The Psychic Life of Power: theories in subjection Stanford, California, Stanford University Press 1997.
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Boxer, L. Sustainability Perspectives. Philos. of Manag. 6, 87–97 (2007). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20086237
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20086237