The Primordial Stakeholder:
Advancing the Conceptual
Consideration of Stakeholder
Status for the Natural Environment
ABSTRACT. This article furthers the argument for
a stakeholder theory that integrates into managerial
decision-making the relationship between business
organizations and the natural environment. The
authors review the literature on stakeholder theory
and the debate over whom or what should count as
a stakeholder. The authors also critique and expand
the stakeholder identification and salience model
developed by Mitchell and Wood (1997) by recon-
ceptualizing the stakeholder attributes of power, legit-
imacy, and urgency, as well as by developing a fourth
stakeholder attribute: proximity. In this way, the
authors provide a stronger basis for arguing for the
salience of the natural environment as the primary and
primordial stakeholder of the firm.
Cathy Driscoll received her Ph.D. in organizational behav-
iour and marketing from Queen’s University in 1994.
Currently, she is an associate professor of management
in the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her research inter-
ests include stakeholder management, business ethics,
corporate social responsibility, spirituality and business,
multi-stakeholder collaboration, and management edu-
cation.
Mark Starik is an Associate Professor of Strategic
Management and Public Policy in the George
Washington (GW) University School of Business and
Public Management (SBPM), in Washington, D.C. His
research, teaching, and service interests are in the inte-
grated areas of global strategic environmental manage-
ment and policy, and sustainable energy and tourism
stakeholder management. He has published widely in
academic and practitioner information sources and has
consulted with a number of business, government, and
nonprofit organizations.
Journal of Business Ethics 49: 55–73, 2004.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Cathy Driscoll
Mark Starik
KEY WORDS: environment, relationships, stake-
holder, sustainability
Primordial – 1. Being or happening first in
sequence of time; original
2. Primary or fundamental
The American Heritage Dictionary of
the English Language (2000)
The concept of “stakeholder” has been used as
a heuristic in the management literature for
nearly two decades. The stakeholder framework
has been forwarded to help managers to both
define an organization’s social obligations and
manage relationships with its respective stake-
holders. While most stakeholder theories have
progressed to the point in which the natural
environment is given stakeholder status, some
academics continue to be reluctant to include the
natural environment as one of the firm’s primary
stakeholders. Although an increasing number of
scholars are now focusing their attention on man-
agement – natural environment relationships and
a growing number of conference and publication
outlets for research in this area (e.g. the increasing
membership of the Organization and the Natural
Environment interest group in the Academy of
Management and the increasing number of
related journals such as Organization & Environ-
ment), most management theories continue to
have a very limited concept of “environment”
(Gladwin et al., 1995; Shrivastava, 1994, 1995a).
Similarly, although many companies are
increasingly upholding environmental sustain-
56 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
ability as a value (Berry and Rondinelli, 1998),
some practitioners have been reluctant to
consider the natural environment as a primary
stakeholder. Some research has shown that when
companies make trade-offs among stakeholders,
the natural environment is often placed low on
the list (Bendheim et al., 1998; Nasi et al., 1997).
Other scholars have suggested that companies
overlook strategic environmental considerations,
believing that the global economic system is
somehow independent of the Earth’s ecological
system (Gladwin et al., 1995; Jennings and
Zandbergen, 1995; Schmidheiny and Zorraquin,
1996; Shrivastava, 1994; Stead and Stead, 1996).
Therefore, although many business organizations
apparently are attempting to green themselves
through self-regulation, technological innovation,
industry-wide codes, and certifications, these
voluntary mechanisms are being implemented
slowly, and their record has not been overly suc-
cessful in halting environmental damage caused
by business activity (King and Lenox, 2000).
This article advances the conceptual consid-
eration of the natural environment’s status as a
stakeholder of the firm. For purposes of this
article, we distinguish between environmental
institutions (groups, organizations, associations,
or networks) as stakeholders and the natural envi-
ronment as one or more stakeholders. In this
sense, the natural environment is seen as a
stakeholder entity in the same sense as the local
community, the general public, future human
generations, and developing countries might be.
Carroll (1993) has described these generic
stakeholders as those common to all types of
enterprises. Here, natural environment encom-
passes the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere,
ecosystem processes, and all human and non-
human life forms.
First, we briefly review the literature on stake-
holder theory and the debate on who or what
should count as a stakeholder, in particular
focusing on the Mitchell et al. (1997) stakeholder
framework. Then, applying the case of the
natural environment, we critique the beliefs and
assumptions underlying the stakeholder attributes
of power, legitimacy, and urgency that are an
integral part of the Mitchell et al. framework.
In addition, we suggest additional stakeholder
criteria, thereby providing a stronger basis to
argue that the natural environment should be
included as one or more primary stakeholders of
the firm. This article focuses on the development
of the attribute of proximity and we build on the
work of Mitchell and his colleagues, contributing
to a normative theory of stakeholder identifica-
tion and salience. Our goal is to expand their
framework to argue that the natural environment
can be identified as the primary stakeholder of
the firm in its own right and that it should have
salience for all managers.
I. The stakeholder concept
Stakeholder theory concerns the nature of the
relationships between organizations and their
respective stakeholders and the processes and
outcomes of these relationships for organizations
and their stakeholders ( Jones and Wicks, 1999).
The manager is typically placed at the center of
the contractual relationship between a business
organization and its stakeholders (Hill and Jones,
1992). Definitions of stakeholder in the literature
range from the broad and inclusive to the narrow
and exclusive. The inclusive definition is typi-
cally prescriptive, adopting a public relations or
moral focus. For example, stakeholders have
often been considered to include any groups or
individuals who can significantly affect or be
affected by an organization’s activities (Evan and
Freeman, 1988; Freeman, 1984; Donaldson and
Preston, 1995; Greenley and Foxall, 1997), but
has been broadened to include non-humans
(Buchholz, 1993; Starik, 1995; Stead and Stead,
2000). More narrow definitions include or
exclude stakeholders based on managerial per-
ceptions of stakeholder power, resource depen-
dence, or risk (e.g., Barney, 1997; Clarkson,
1994; Greenley and Foxall, 1997; Harrison and
St. John, 1996; Nasi, 1995; Nasi et al., 1997).
In for-profit corporations, maximization of share-
holder wealth is typically considered to be the
primary stakeholder goal (Shrivastava, 1995a). To
avoid “excessive complications”, conventional
management encourages managers to limit the
number of stakeholders and focus primarily on
financial indicators (e.g., Barney, 1997; Grant,
 The Primordial Stakeholder
1995, p. 34). Mitchell et al. (1997, p. 857)
suggest that the broad view of stakeholders is
“bewilderingly complex for managers to apply.”
Normative stakeholder theory focuses on
defining the basis of stakeholder legitimacy,
whether it is risk, property rights, or moral
claims (Mitchell et al., 1997). For example,
Donaldson and Preston (1995) contend that
managers should enter into a mutually supportive
relationship with their stakeholders because it is
morally right. A “social contract” exists between
business and society. According to these authors,
“stakeholders are identified through the actual or
potential harms and benefits that they experience
or anticipate experiencing as a result of the firm’s
actions or inactions” (1995, p. 86). Normative
stakeholder theory has been criticized, however,
for the lack of a specific framework and for
problems in identifying stakeholders (Frederick,
1998; Jones, 1980; Mitchell et al., 1997; Rowley,
1998; Thompson et al., 1991).
Mitchell et al. (1997) attempted to address this
gap by specifying theoretically “who [or what]
really counts” as a stakeholder in management
thinking. According to these authors, stake-
holders have one or more of the following attrib-
utes: power to influence the firm; legitimacy of a
relationship; and/or urgency of a claim. They
predict “the salience of a particular stakeholder
to the firm’s management is low if only one of
these attributes is present, moderate if two attrib-
utes are present, and high if all three attributes
are present” (p. 879). “Definitive stakeholders”
have not only power and legitimacy, but also an
urgent claim on the firm, which gives these
stakeholders managerial priority. According to
their framework, the natural environment is a
“dependent stakeholder” or one that depends on
other dominant stakeholders “for the power
necessary to carry out [its] will” (p. 877). In their
view, nature’s claims are often seen as legitimate
and urgent; however, the natural environment is
not salient to managers unless other dominant
stakeholders exercise their power to support the
natural environment or unless managerial values
lean in a “green” direction. Although some
scholars have asserted that various aspects of the
natural environment can be considered as one or
more primary stakeholders of the firm (e.g.,
57
Buchholz, 1993; Shrivastava, 1995a; Srikantia
and Bilimoria, 1997; Starik, 1995; Stead and
Stead, 1996, 2000), traditional stakeholder theory
has failed to recognize the Earth and its sur-
roundings as a legitimate stakeholder with
intrinsic worth (Nash, 1987; Starik, 1994).
In the following section, we consider the
theories and assumptions underlying the stake-
holder attributes of power, legitimacy, and
urgency, and discuss some limitations of the
Mitchell et al. framework in determining the
salience of the natural environment as the
primary and primordial stakeholder of the
firm.
II. Power, legitimacy, and urgency
a. Power
Many conventional management theories empha-
size the central role of power in decision-making,
focusing on utilitarian resource-exchange and
dependence-based relationships (e.g., Blau, 1964;
Oliver, 1991; Pfeffer, 1992; Pfeffer and Salancik,
1978). Similarly, most stakeholder models have
emphasized managerial perceptions of power
in identifying and prioritizing stakeholders
(Clarkson, 1995; Greenley and Foxall, 1997;
Harrison and St. John, 1996; Mitchell et al.,
1997; Nasi et al., 1997). An instrumental stake-
holder perspective defines stakeholders as those
groups or individuals who are in a mutually
dependent or exchange relationship with the firm
(Freeman, 1984; Freeman and Evan, 1990; Hill
and Jones, 1992; Nasi, 1995; Nasi et al., 1997).
Others have suggested that stakeholders have a
direct influence on organizational survival
(Carroll, 1993; Freeman, 1984; Freeman and
Reed, 1983; Nasi, 1995; among others).
It is readily recognizable that the natural envi-
ronment has a mutually dependent, exchange-
based relationship with business organizations.
The firm depends on local ecosystems, as well
as the broader ecosphere, for raw materials, plant,
animal, and microbial inputs, and energy
(Bateson, 1972; Gladwin et al., 1995; Starik,
1995). In fact, business organizations exchange
more with the natural environment than with
58 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
any other stakeholder, interacting through
“myriad ecosystem service transactions that ulti-
mately keep organizations alive” (Gladwin et al.,
1995, p. 875). Other scholars have described the
complex interdependencies among ecosystems,
human systems, and business organizations (e.g.,
Bruntland Commission, 1987; Daly and Cobb,
1994; Jennings and Zandbergen, 1995; Purser et
al., 1995; Starik and Rands, 1995).
Mitchell et al. (1997) applied Etzioni’s (1964)
organizational bases of power to their stakeholder
attribute of power. Their application implies that
a stakeholder has power to the extent that it can
use coercive (force/threat), utilitarian (material/
incentives), or normative (symbolic influence)
power to “impose its will in the relationship”
(p. 865). While we may never identify nature’s
“will”, the natural environment holds coercive
and utilitarian power over business organizations
as shown by countless examples of the natural
environment’s significant influence on industrial
activity. The impact of super-storms, hurricanes,
and droughts on the agriculture industry shows
that the natural environment holds coercive
power over business organizations. The impact of
the loss of financial resources in the fishing
industry due to depletion of fish stocks shows
that the natural environment has utilitarian power
over business organizations. From the Purple
Loosestrife plant infiltrating North American
waterways to genetically modified seeds spreading
to non-modified crops, the natural environment
is powerful in terms of impact. However, the
influence of nature, especially the subtle influ-
ence over time, such as the effect bodies of
water have on their shores and, consequently, on
land-based human activities, such as residential
developments, is overlooked in most conceptu-
alizations of stakeholder power.
Perhaps this is because the essence of power in
current organizational and social theories is the
influence of one or more social actors (Pfeffer,
1981; Weber, 1947). Similarly, stakeholder theory
has traditionally dealt with an organization’s
social obligations. For example, Savage et al.
(1991, p. 61) suggested that stakeholders have to
demonstrate their “ability to influence” the firm.
Although Mitchell et al. (1997) expanded stake-
holder power to include coercive, utilitarian, and
normative powers; they maintained a social
agency-only perspective for explaining stake-
holder salience. In other words, in their social
perspective “[a]n entity may possess power to
impose its will upon a firm, but unless it is aware
of its power and willing to exercise it on the firm,
it is not a stakeholder with high salience to
managers” (Mitchell et al., 1997, p. 868).
Accordingly, some stakeholder management
theory continues to view only humans as stake-
holders (e.g. Szwajkowski, 2000). In other words,
shareholders, woodlot owners, and governments,
not trees or forest ecosystems, supply timber and
influence other stakeholders in the forest
industry.
Moreover, it has been suggested that the social
power of the stakeholder in stakeholder theory
is based on economic exchange and that con-
ventional stakeholder theories overlook such
topics as asymmetrical relations of power and
systemic inequalities, which can lead to envi-
ronmental injustice (Banerjee, 2000). The natural
environment supplies “critical resources” to the
firm but usually not through economic exchange
relationships. However, it has been estimated that
ecological services can be economically valued at
approximately $33 trillion a year (Lovins et al.,
1999). Still, although regulatory, social, and com-
petitive pressures have forced some companies to
internalize some ecological costs (Hart, 1995;
Hart and Ahuja, 1996), most companies do not
account for ecological exchanges (Lovins et al.,
1999).
b. Legitimacy
Because the concept of legitimacy is inherently
vague, numerous definitions can be found in the
management and organizations literature (Hybels,
1995). According to Suchman (1995, p. 573), the
character of legitimacy is multifaceted, and “will
operate differently in different contexts.” Also,
the management literature comprises both
strategic and moral bases for legitimacy. In stake-
holder theory, these include contractual rela-
tionships (based on legal, moral, or ownership
rights) (cf. Evan and Freeman, 1988) or
exchange-based relationships in which those who
 The Primordial Stakeholder
own the resources supply “critical resources” to
the firm (Hill and Jones, 1992, p. 133).
According to Hybels (1995), however, resource
flows provide the best evidence of organizational
legitimacy.
Most literature suggests that stakeholder legit-
imacy is grounded in pragmatic evaluations of
stakeholder relationships rather than in norma-
tive assessments of moral propriety (cf. Aldrich
and Fiol, 1994). For example, Barney (1997,
p. 43) asserts that “[t]o be a stakeholder, a
party must make important resources (such as
labor, money, and loyalty) available to a firm.”
Pragmatic approaches to legitimacy assume an
instrumental view of the concept, in which legit-
imacy is seen as a resource that can be manipu-
lated (e.g., Dowling and Pfeffer, 1975; Pfeffer and
Salancik, 1978; Suchman, 1995; Zimmerman and
Zeitz, 2002). This approach focuses on the “self-
interested calculations of an organization’s most
immediate audiences” and has been referred to
as “exchange legitimacy” or “influence legiti-
macy” (Suchman, 1995, p. 578). This instru-
mental view also parallels the power-dependence
and resource-exchange approach to firm-stake-
holder relationships discussed in the previous
section. Moral legitimacy, on the other hand, is
based on normative approval and the rightness or
wrongness of organizational actions, downplaying
managerial agency and instrumentality (Aldrich
and Fiol, 1994; Suchman, 1995, p. 576).
Legitimacy either competes or couples with
power in many management theories (e.g.,
agency, behavioral, institutional, population
ecology, resource dependence, and transaction
cost theories of the firm) (Mitchell et al., 1997).
According to Stinchcombe (1968), legitimacy is
actually defined by the values of those with social
power, a coupling that appears to carry over into
stakeholder theories of the firm. Mitchell and
colleagues suggest that although legitimacy and
power are independent variables (see also Weber,
1947), managers consider how these two attrib-
utes interact when determining stakeholder
salience. Although managers view some stake-
holders as legitimate even though they have no
power, these stakeholders will not likely be
salient to managers unless they hold either the
power to influence the firm or the urgency of a
59
claim. In other words, “[l]egitimacy gains rights
through power . . .” (Mitchell et al., 1997,
p. 870).
The natural environment has attained legiti-
macy from the world’s scientific community,
which has reached consensus on the deteriorating
state of the environment and the links to human
activity (National Academy of Sciences, 2002).
For example, global climate change has been
associated with human carbon emissions,
including business use of fossil fuels, and the loss
of biodiversity, again linked to habitat-destroying
human economic activities such as fishing,
forestry, and residential and commercial con-
struction (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, 2000). Yet, while significant effort has
been invested in attempting to slow or reverse
global environmental damage and deterioration
in the past several decades, a number of world
environmental challenges have proved intractable,
and several have worsened in that time (Brown,
2000).
However, Banerjee (2000) has suggested that,
managers are bounded by a legitimacy that has
an economic basis and that does not genuinely
address ecological concerns. Similarly, whereas
risk has been described as a primary basis for
stakeholder legitimacy (Clarkson, 1994), some
scholars have suggested that conventional man-
agement studies focus on a narrow view of risk-
one dominated by financial risk to the firm (e.g.,
Shrivastava, 1995a). According to Shrivastava (pp.
124–125), the traditional management paradigm
is limited in several ways in its response to eco-
logical risks. These include a “denatured” view
of the environment, a production/consumption
bias, a financial risk bias, and excessive anthro-
pocentrism. An anthropocentric and egocentric
basis for management studies and its human-
nature dualism have been described and critiqued
in detail elsewhere (e.g. Gladwin et al., 1995;
Purser et al., 1995; Shrivastava, 1994, 1995a).
Like power, the concept of organizational
legitimacy has been used primarily in a context
of social relations (Hybels, 1995). Human actors
are, therefore, required to legitimize organiza-
tional activities. However, that the public
responds so strongly to images of or actual expe-
rience with oil-soaked birds, bloody marine
60 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
mammals, and clear-cut forests indicates that
humans feel some emotional connection to non-
human nature and a sense of moral obligation to
the natural environment. In his book, “Should
Trees Have Standing? Towards Legal Rights for
Natural Objects,” Christopher Stone (1974)
describes how an aesthetic and sensory appreci-
ation of the natural environment can lead to
socio-emotional responses which bring us
“closer” to non-human nature. Moreover, the
question of whether animals have legal rights
continues to receive significant mainstream atten-
tion decades after the concept was first intro-
duced to wide scholarly and practitioner
audiences (Hacking, 2000; Zeller, 2000). Even
short of legal rights, increasing attention to
animal protection can be seen as an evolution in
the relationships between humans and non-
humans. For instance, the number of U.S. states
with felony animal cruelty provisions more than
quadrupled from 7 in 1994 to 31 in 2000
(Kenna, 2000), and the 2000 election in the U.S.
included a record number of ballot measures con-
cerning animals (Pacelle, 2000).
c. Urgency
Mitchell et al. (1997) defined stakeholder
urgency as the stakeholder’s claim for immediate
attention based on the ideas of time sensitivity or
the “degree to which managerial delay in
attending to the claim or relationship is unac-
ceptable to the stakeholder” and criticality or the
“importance of the claim or the relationship to
the stakeholder” (p. 867). However, a recent
review of the strategy literature found that the
subjective nature of “time”, including how social
processes affect perceptions of time, has been
overlooked by researchers (Mosakowski and
Earley, 2000). For example, society’s attention is
often focused on high profile, large-scale crises,
such as the human-made environmental cata-
strophes of oil and chemical spills, hazardous
waste leaks, and industrial explosions. Indeed,
Mitchell et al. (1997) use the Exxon Valdez oil
spill to show how managers attend to stakeholder
issues. During this crisis, the public quickly
responded to the media’s portrayal of oil-soaked,
dying otters and birds. However, Allan et al.
(1999) and Smith (2000) have suggested that
slowly unfolding stories that deal with scientific
uncertainty, such as climate change and biodi-
versity loss are not given as much attention by
the media. More attention is beginning to focus
on slow build-ups of environmental problems,
however (Beamish, 2001). Human risks associ-
ated with critical and chronic long-term envi-
ronmental problems are becoming increasingly
tangible (e.g., increases in heat-related deaths in
large cities, in skin cancer, and in super-storms
and hurricanes) and more countries are acknowl-
edging the association between human activity
and slowly building environmental problems
(e.g., the Kyoto Protocol and the U.S. Bush
Administration’s recent acknowledgement of the
relationship between global climate change and
human activity). However, salience is still lacking
regarding “slowly evolving issues,” where the
impact on humans is not as obvious as environ-
mental catastrophes (e.g., urban sprawl, coastal
development, biodiversity loss, and endanger-
ment of species extinction).
Like power and legitimacy, urgency has a social
and an economic connotation. Although the focus
in the Mitchell et al. model is on the stake-
holder’s perception of the urgency of the stake-
holder’s claim, managers’ perceptions of urgency
drive most stakeholder models and those
perceptions are biased towards economic short-
termism (Laverty, 1996), which is often precip-
itated by the use of cost-benefit analysis, rates of
return, and changes in stock prices. Agle et al.
(1999) have recently found evidence supporting
the idea that shareholder urgency drives most
corporate managerial strategies. Others have
similarly suggested that managers are short-
sighted in their planning horizons and focus on
short-term profits (Schumacher, 1973; Srikantia
and Bilimoria, 1997; Stead and Stead, 1996). The
resurgence in the number of mergers, acquisi-
tions, and downsizings in North America and
Europe over the past decade, along with the
recent cases of fraudulent accounting practices
among major North American companies,
provides further evidence of a short-term
economic focus.
Although environmental management strate-
 The Primordial Stakeholder
gies have been developed to consider environ-
mental impact related to waste and pollution,
such as pollution-prevention-pays and the natural
resource-based view, less attention is given to
longer-term, less observable and incremental
impacts, such as those affecting biodiversity and
the overall ecosystem. Starik and Rands (1995,
p. 920) suggest that, “(g)iven the criticality of
economic contingencies, we would not be sur-
prised if most organizations gave insufficient
attention to ecological contingencies until they
became too dramatic to ignore.” Political ecolo-
gist and economist Herman Daly (1997) is also
not optimistic that the market system will
effectively catch up to ecological realities. Large-
scale catastrophic events can result in change,
as illustrated in the Exxon Valdez and the
Union Carbide-Bhopal disasters, but how does
ecosystem biodiversity that is critical to the firm’s
long-term survival gain managerial attention?
Also, how do endangered species and fragile
ecosystems increase their salience to managers
under current stakeholder frameworks? We assert
that other stakeholders are prioritized because
managers focus on short-term economic results
rather than on the long-term sustainability of
their organization. Mitchell et al. (1997, p. 879)
suggest that stakeholders can increase their
salience if they are clever at “coalition building,
political action, or social construction of reality.”
If, however, as they (1997, p. 870) conclude,
legitimacy gains “voice through urgency,” how
do we reconcile this with the idea of a “silent
spring” (Carson, 1962)? The Mitchell et al.
model does not focus on the subtle, the silent,
and the slowly evolving. In many respects,
urgency, like legitimacy, appears to gain rights
through (economic-based) power.
d. What’s wrong with this picture?
While the three criteria for “stakeholderness”
that have been forwarded, in whole or part, by
Freeman (1984), Carroll (1993), Mitchell et al.
(1997) and others appear necessary in deter-
mining stakeholder identification and salience,
the attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency
as currently conceptualized fail to give the natural
61
environment primary stakeholder status. That is,
definitions associated with these three constructs
and their corresponding bases are inadequate for
incorporating the near and the far, the short- and
the long-term, and the actual and the potential.
However, by reinterpreting these three attributes,
we can make the natural environment – primary
organizational stakeholder connection more
obvious. We are assisted by previous scholars’
work in the areas of eco-sustainability (e.g.,
Bruntland Commission, 1987; Purser et al.,
1995; Shrivastava, 1995b) and the moral standing
of the natural environment (e.g., Berry, 1988;
Leopold, 1970; Purser et al., 1995; Rolston,
1994).
III. Revisiting power, legitmacy, and
III. urgency
Mitchell et al. (p. 857) suggested that normative
stakeholder theory’s search for stakeholder legit-
imacy “can be a powerful blinder to the real
impact of stakeholder power and claim urgency.”
Alternatively, we suggest that the limited con-
ceptions of power that continue to dominate
stakeholder thought and practice are a powerful
blinder to the importance of many legitimate
stakeholders, including the natural environment.
The context of the resource-dependent relation-
ship between the firm and the natural environ-
ment is different from social theory perspectives
under an eco-sustainability paradigm. Here, power
is used equitably in accordance with both social
and ecological needs. Instead of focusing on social
domination and control, the relationships among
nature, society, and economy are emphasized,
such as those relationships among nature, equity,
and development. In this alternate paradigm,
power is “gained through the emergence of
collaborative assemblies, interdependent domains,
and cooperative networks” (Purser et al., 1995,
p. 1080). The mutual dependence between the
firm and the natural environment is seen as
critical to firm survival, and human agency and
ability to influence, directly and perceptibly, are
not considered necessary attributes for deter-
mining stakeholder salience (cf. Brenner, 1993;
Starik, 1994). Moreover, it is nature, not the firm
62 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
that holds the balance of power. Firms acknowl-
edge their biophysical foundations and the inter-
connectedness of all life cycles.
To better identify and make salient the long-
range threats and far-reaching material impacts
related to the business organization – natural
environment relationship, we suggest that the
concept of pervasiveness (the degree to which
stakeholder impact is spread over distance and
time) be incorporated into both coercive power
and utilitarian power. These are two of the bases
for stakeholder power described in the Mitchell
et al. model.
The nature of legitimacy also changes under
an eco-sustainablity perspective, as ecological,
economic, and social priorities change, as evi-
denced by the increased number of legal and
moral claims made on behalf of the natural envi-
ronment. Management theory and practice focus
on moral depictions of legitimacy, which are
grounded in broader cultural and ecological
values. For example, Wood’s (1991) bases for
organizational legitimacy to stakeholder identi-
fication and salience could be broadened to
include ecological as well as individual, organi-
zational, and societal levels. Along similar lines,
Gladwin et al. (1995, p. 898) have extended the
idea of a “social contract” between the firm and
society (Donaldson and Preston, 1995) to the
idea of a “natural contract with the biosphere,”
to represent the interactive relationship between
business organizations and the natural environ-
ment. In this regard, property rights would be
embedded not only in human rights (Donaldson
and Preston, 1995) but also in ecological ethics.
Under an eco-sustainability paradigm, ecolog-
ical risks are at the core of management issues
because nature is “the stakeholder that bears the
most risk from industrial activities” (Shrivastava,
1995a, p. 127). In this respect, stakeholder theory
would focus on the mutual symbiosis between
business organizations and their stakeholders. As
human individuals develop ever numerous and
complex relationships with the non-human
natural environment, more human organizations
will also begin to explicitly recognize the stake-
holder status of non-human nature.
Also, as managers change focus from firm-
centered to eco-sustainability, urgency would
take on a different dimension. Under an eco-
sustainability paradigm, time is assumed to be
multiscale (Shrivastava, 1995a). The focus is on
both current and future generations and both the
short- and the long-term impact of decisions on
the natural environment. According to Suzuki
(1997, p. 12), “[i]n such an interdependent
universe . . . every action has repercussions that
reverberate far beyond the moment.” Ecological
problems are consequential, if not catastrophic,
and require immediate attention and action by
managers; financial risks and ecological risks are
recognized as being interdependent. As Ryland
(2000, p. 397) suggests, “When money is
replaced with a concern for life, the time frame
for decision making automatically shifts away
from the nanoseconds of the financial markets
to a concern for future generations.”
We suggest that probability (potentiality or
likelihood of interaction) be included as a basis
for urgency in addition to Mitchell et al.’s bases
of time sensitivity and criticality. While actual
effects between any two entities can imply a
stakeholder relationship, a probable or potential
interaction can also imply a stakeholder rela-
tionship as in a firm’s customer prospects, its
possible suppliers undergoing firm qualification,
and its job applicants. In each of these and similar
cases, the stakeholder aspect of “affect or affected
by” may already be occurring even before the
more traditional stakeholder relationships have
begun. We assert that the more likely these
entities are of being converted from potential to
actual customers, suppliers, and employees,
respectively, the more likely they can be consid-
ered stakeholders. This suggestion follows a well-
known concept in the issues management
literature called the probability-impact matrix, in
which issues with high probability and high
impact are prescribed for the greatest amount of
attention (Carroll, 1993). The issues management
“impact” variable has already been included or
at least implied in the “power” criterion for
“stakeholderness.” Therefore, at least those
aspects of non-human nature that have high
probabilities of affecting business organizations or
being affected by them, such as projected short-
ages of fuel, fish, and forest stocks, might be con-
sidered to have firm stakeholder status since
 The Primordial Stakeholder
cognizant organizations will already factor likely-
occurring environmental phenomena into their
respective plans before such shortages occur. For
example, the Eastern Atlantic cod fishery only
gained managerial salience as a stakeholder once
its fish stocks were depleted. As Mitchell et al.
(1997, p. 859) have stated, “potential [stake-
holder] relationships can be as relevant as the
actual one.” Firms might see additional imme-
diate costs as they act to reduce their impact on,
for example, global warming, but in terms of
future productivity, tourism, international trade,
and insurance costs, the potential benefits are
huge (World Wildlife Fund, 2002).
By our reconceptualizing the attributes of
power, legitimacy, and urgency under an eco-sus-
tainability perspective, the natural environment
would have power, legitimacy, and urgency and
therefore, more likely attain managerial salience
and priority. At the same time, we suggest that
the development of additional criteria enables
academicians and practitioners both to improve
on the stakeholder concept generally and to make
a stronger case for the natural environment as the
primordial and primary stakeholder of the firm.
IV. Expanding the set of stakeholder
IV. criteria
While much of the stakeholder literature identi-
fies two or more possible stakeholder criteria, a
recent work on stakeholder identity by Phillips
and Reichart (2000) holds that only a fairness-
based set of criteria is appropriate for ascription
of stakeholder status. In our opinion, confining
stakeholder determinations to one criterion, such
as fairness, reduces the usefulness of the concept,
in this case ostensibly applicable only to humans
in justice-oriented relationships with one
another. Such a limited perspective of “stake-
holderness” may not even include those rela-
tionships most academics and practitioners have
readily accepted, such as the inclusion of national
environmental groups among the stakeholders of
major multinational companies that have been
responsible for major environmental problems
(Phillips and Reichart, 2000). Rather, we believe
that stakeholder theory needs to reflect more
63
rather than fewer stakeholder aspects to make the
concept more comprehensive and realistic. In
addition, other criteria might further help in
developing a stakeholder identification and
salience model that considers the non-human
natural environment to be one or more key
stakeholders of the firm. The concept of
proximity seems especially applicable to both
defining “stakeholderness” and including the rest
of nature in the stakeholder considerations of
organizations.
a. Proximity
Proximity is suggested here as a possible “stake-
holderness” criterion because spatial distance can
be as important in stakeholder interactions as is
time, which is associated with the urgency
criteria suggested by Mitchell et al. (Lee and
Robbins, 2000). Others, such as Gladwin et al.
(1995, p. 898) have suggested that stakeholder
models need to be “more spatially and tempo-
rally inclusive”. Proximity, or “the state, quality,
or fact of being near or next” in “space, time,
or order” (Soukhanov, 1984, p. 948), has been
an important concept in a wide variety of schol-
arly fields, including health care (Benedetti,
2001), the arts (Clark, 2000), the social sciences
(Smith, 2000), and business (Park, 1994; Green
and McNaughton, 2000). When applied to
spatial relationships, proximity allows for the
common observation that entities, including
organizations that share the same physical space
or are adjacent to one another often affect one
another. From nation states that share borders
through firms whose headquarters are located in
the same towns to individuals and households
who are residential neighbors, their respective
proximity characteristics contribute significantly
to their development of stakeholder relationships.
As such, spatial nearness is one of many factors
that can play a role in stakeholder recognition
and interaction. We can, therefore, theorize that
the greater the proximity, the greater the likeli-
hood of the development of stakeholder rela-
tionships, ceteris paribus.
However, this connection between proximity
and stakeholder status is highly nuanced, as are
64 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
perhaps other stakeholder criteria. In addition to
physical proximity, organizations can be said to
be proximate if they share the same or similar
ideas, approaches, and actions, that is, they are
proximate to one another in concept or practice
or that they occupy the same “field” (Bansal and
Roth, 2000). For example, firms in the same
industry (defined here as a “product-market”) are
well-accepted stakeholders of one another, par-
ticularly if they are members of the same or of
allied industry associations. In addition, firms that
share stakeholders, say retail customers, or firms
that consider themselves buyers or suppliers of
one another are considered proximate stake-
holders in their shared value chains. Thus, prox-
imity may be associated with the well-researched
business variable of relatedness (Tsai, 2000; Fan
and Lang, 2000), as well as with the emerging
idea of stakeholder networks (Heuer and Starik,
2002), in which the relevant context is a set or
system of inter-connected stakeholders (i.e. a
business’ stakeholders which also have stake-
holders, etc.).
Two relevant variables of networks that are
related to the proximity concept are centrality
and density (Rowley, 1997), in which entities
such as organizations can be considered to be
controlling hubs if they are located more cen-
trally among a group of other network entities
especially when these entities are positioned in
networks “thick with” nodes, that is, the linkages
among these entities are numerous and interac-
tive.
A special case of the application of proximity
is that in which an entity lies within, or is
embedded in, the other entity, that is, they share
a physical space. Organizational facilities located
within the physical boundaries of an organiza-
tion; companies located in specific neighbor-
hoods, cities, and states; and firms that operate
within national government jurisdictions are
examples of stakeholder embeddedness. Such
embeddedness sets the stage for stakeholder inter-
action since the embedded entity cannot help
affecting, at least marginally, the larger entity it
is within, since the former is a component of the
latter larger entity (Uzzi, 1997).
Similarly, the concept of ubiquity, in which an
entity is not only surrounded by another, but one
in which a stakeholder is so multi-faceted as to
be virtually omnipresent, also applies to the
attribute of proximity. Here the mutuality of the
co-existence between, say, an organization and
its stakeholders, such as the organization’s
members, is the relevant stakeholder criterion.
Yet another special case of proximity might
be described as intimacy or affinity, depending
on the degree of attraction, especially between
humans or between humans and other species
or parts of nature. Organizational relationships
are not typically discussed in intimacy terms, but
those with an affinity for one another, perhaps
because of complementarity of organization
missions, strategies, structures, resources, or orga-
nizational members, are commonly so described
in organizational alliances and partnerships.
Since non-human nature surrounds all human
business and is the ultimate context in which all
human business is conducted, it would qualify
as one or more firm critical stakeholders under
the sub-criterion of embeddedness. The case for
considering nature as one or more organizational
stakeholders includes each of the aspects of
proximity discussed above. The most obvious
connection between the proposed proximity
stakeholder criterion and our assertion that orga-
nizations and the natural environment interac-
tions can be considered stakeholder relationships
(especially in eco-sustainability perspectives) is
the immediate local impacts produced by orga-
nizations that pollute or deplete local ecosystems,
and the local impacts the natural environment,
such as weather patterns, can have on organiza-
tions in or nearby affected areas. For a combined
example, coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
Ohio river valley often create smog over wide
swaths of the national parks located just east of
that region as prevailing winds transport various
airborne pollutants from one region to the next,
reducing the visibility of national park tourists
and the financial health of tour operators
(National Parks and Conservation Association,
1994). Many similar locally proximate organiza-
tion and natural environment interactions in
which industrial facility emissions were found to
significantly affect contiguous neighborhoods,
also support this argument (e.g., Bolin, 2000;
Morello-Fosch et al., 2001).
 The Primordial Stakeholder
The proximity of organizations to various
natural environments establishes a stakeholder
connection between the two since these
entities continually affect one another in the
physical world. The network aspects of centrality
and density, for example, play key roles in
this argument, since most considerations of
the natural environment are place based.
Organizations that produce contaminants, such
as small farms that allow their nitrogen wastes to
run off into nearby streams, are not quite as
central and are much less dense than larger, more
urban feedlot operations with inadequate live-
stock waste control. In this case, both small and
larger businesses may be stakeholders of the prox-
imate water bodies, but the latter might be con-
sidered to have the stronger stakeholder “effect”
(Centner, 2001).
The network aspect of connected systems is
another argument for considering the natural
environment as an organizational stakeholder.
Global warming causes, processes, and results, for
instance, are apparently evident planetwide, with
some regional variations. For example, although
a carbon dioxide and electricity producing coal-
fired power plant in the U.S. Midwest is not
contiguous to the multiple species that inhabit
Earth’s polar regions, given the planet’s air cir-
culation patterns, in concert with other large
carbon-emitters, this power plant can still affect
the habitats of these species, thereby leading to
an ascription of a stakeholder relationship.
Similarly, transboundary transfers of water
pollution from industrial “hot-spots” in some
Eastern European and Asian countries threaten
global biological diversity. Proximity is still
involved in these stakeholder interactions, but the
connection is a subtle one in that proximity can
connote, especially in dynamic natural environ-
ments such as these, not only nearness in space
but also interaction in an ever-changing system,
though this interaction may be non-exclusive,
cumulative, and temporary. Similarly, ubiquity as
a special case of stakeholder proximity certainly
applies to the natural environment and the orga-
nizations that interact with it. At least in the
physical world, all things human including our
organizations exist in nature and consist of nature
(Wilson, 1992). This obvious statement implies
65
that organizations must interact with the natural
environment for their physical survival, making
nature a ubiquitous stakeholder of all human
organizations. If all stakeholders exist in the
natural world and all are physically composed of
natural matter and energy, only one logical con-
clusion is possible – nature, too, is a stakeholder
of organizations.
Regarding the proximity aspects of intimacy
and affinity, once again, organization and natural
environment stakeholder interactions can be
widely identified. For example, organizations that
hold periodic retreats for their members and
other human stakeholders in various “natural”
settings, often encourage retreat attendees to “get
close to” or “become one with” nature. Also,
firms that locate their headquarters or other facil-
ities in regions in or near attractive natural areas
are also examples of organizations selecting to
interact with the natural environment because
of their own or other human stakeholders’
affinity for various place-based aspects of nature.
For example, Patagonia has established its main
office within blocks of the surfing beaches of
Ventura, California, which are enjoyed by the
firms’ managers, employees, and other stake-
holders (Patagonia, 2002).
In suggesting proximity as a stakeholder status
criterion, in addition to power, legitimacy, and
urgency, and applying it to the natural environ-
ment, we do so as non-naively as possible. First
of all, we recognize that not all stakeholder rela-
tionships whether human or non-human are col-
laborative and mutually-supporting (Bengstsson
and Kock, 2000). In the environmental realm,
even human coexistence with some non-human
entities, such as many life-threatening bacteria
and viruses, will not be possible. Here, we allow
for the Freeman (1984) concept that competitors
can be stakeholders, a categorization extended
from human to non-human stakeholders.
Secondly, we recognize that just as in consid-
erations of human stakeholders, not all non-
human nature will be stakeholders of all firms
everywhere indefinitely. Rather, similar to
human stakeholder considerations, only certain
aspects of non-human nature may be considered
stakeholders by some firms in some locations at
various times. Stakeholder status, whether human
66 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
or non-human, needs to be seen on a continuum
of each of the suggested criteria, with those
entities that have traits that rate highest in each
category having attained the highest order
of “stakeholderness”. We leave the relative
weighting of each of these criteria to future
researchers and practitioners. However, we
suggest that given that the natural environment
not only meets these criteria minimally, but does
so on multiple levels of organizational life (indi-
vidual, team, firm, industry, etc.) implies that its
exclusion from the set of entities with signifi-
cant stakeholder status would be a serious
omission in academic and practitioner manage-
ment perspectives.
We also believe that the development of other
criteria for both human and non-human stake-
holder status might further clarify and strengthen
a model of stakeholder identification and salience
and so encourage our colleagues to develop
them. These may include those concepts that
have been considered in assessing interactions
among human organizations, such as reciprocity,
connectivity, multiplicity, and cohesion (e.g.,
Kenis and Knoke, 2002).
V. Discussions and implications
Business organizations interact with both global
ecological systems and specific local environ-
ments. For example, they interact with nearby
wetlands, lakes, or forests or particular animal
species. As a result, business organizations impact
on, change, and/or interfere with the complexity
and interconnectedness found in the natural envi-
ronment. Some impacts are obvious, direct,
visible, tangible, and proximate spatially and tem-
porally, such as pesticides washing off farmers’
fields and killing fish in nearby rivers. However,
in some situations the impact is global, subtle,
indirect, less visible, less tangible, and less prox-
imate spatially and temporally, such as the cont-
amination of Canadian Arctic animals from PCBs
released in Eastern Europe.
Theoretical development is needed to recon-
ceptualize the salience of the business organiza-
tion – natural environment relationship and to
demonstrate how managers can integrate this
relationship into managerial decision-making.
Some scholars have advanced stakeholder theory
by recognizing the multilateral and dynamic
nature of stakeholder-firm relations and by
describing the socially constructed nature of
stakeholder attributes (e.g., Frooman, 1999;
Mitchell et al., 1997; Rowley, 1997). However,
these stakeholder models are still largely anchored
in a social-only paradigm bounded by overly
narrow economic rationality and traditional
political influence. As the concepts of economy
and society have broadened through globalization
and an electronically interconnected world, the
concept of stakeholder also needs to be broad-
ened to acknowledge the interdependence
between business organizations and ecological
systems.
The lack of managerial salience attributed to
the non-human natural environment can be par-
tially explained by the way the stakeholder attrib-
utes of power, legitimacy, and urgency have been
defined and operationalized. Scholars and prac-
titioners need to acknowledge the limitations to
current managerial conceptualizations of power,
legitimacy, and urgency as the primary attrib-
utes used to determine stakeholder salience. It is
not news that legitimacy and power are prob-
lematic concepts or that power and legitimacy
are often coupled in organizational studies.
However, we have pointed out some additional
conceptual problems surrounding legitimacy,
power, and urgency in relation to stakeholder
identification and salience. First, these three
stakeholder attributes are defined within a social
system-only framework rather than an ecolog-
ical one, which includes both human and non-
human nature. This is not surprising given that
extreme anthropocentrism is entrenched within
management theory and practice (Purser et al.,
1995). Although Mitchell et al. (1997) and others
have advanced stakeholder thinking by acknowl-
edging that human consciousness and wilful
exercise is not a necessary stakeholder feature,
they still consider it necessary for stakeholders
to gain managerial attention. However, we have
argued that a stakeholder theory focusing solely
on human-mediated and economic-based stake-
holder transactions overlooks ecosystem transac-
tions that organizations require for survival. In
 The Primordial Stakeholder
addition, we have shown how legitimacy and
urgency also appear to be coupled with power in
much of current traditional stakeholder thinking.
By reinterpreting legitimacy and urgency, there-
fore, we can, in turn, change managerial per-
ceptions of stakeholder power.
Although Donaldson and Preston (1995)
asserted that no a priori prioritization of stake-
holders exists, we believe that the normative core
of stakeholder theory must acknowledge the
priority of the natural environment among the
firm’s stakeholders. This assertion is in stark
contrast to the emphasis on shareholder priori-
tization underpinning most managerial practice
and theory. A particular set of salient stakeholders
has been emphasized because managers have been
trained and encouraged to prioritize economic
indicators and shareholder issues. This is evident
in Berman et al.’s (1999) recent study of stake-
holder management models used by Fortune 500
companies, which found empirical support for a
strategic stakeholder management model (prag-
matic approach) but none for an intrinsic stake-
holder commitment model (moral approach).
Many management theories, including the
stakeholder theory of the firm, developed during
a time when scholars and practitioners were less
aware of the interdependence between the firm
and the natural environment. Even today, some
managers may still not be aware of the impact
of their decision-making on both local and global
ecological systems. However, scientific consensus
on the deteriorating state of the environment and
society’s awareness of it continue to increase.
While business organizations could conceivably
address environmental problems without consid-
ering non-human nature as one or more stake-
holders, assigning and accepting stakeholder
status for ecosphere entities might increase the
likelihood that such efforts be made sooner and
more significantly than would otherwise be the
case. This ascription of non-human nature as
one or more strategic or “definitive” stakeholders
could encourage greater familiarity, mutual iden-
tification, and action-taking by businesses because
many of these organizations are at least begin-
ning to state their intentions to manage human
stakeholders more frequently and strategically
(Freeman, 1984).
67
Many businesses are only one step away from
recognizing the natural environment as stake-
holder because an increasing number of human
stakeholders are affected by business’ impact on
the environment. For example, employees laid off
due to coal, fishing, and forestry environmental
limits can be seen as human stakeholders affected
by the loss of non-human natural entities.
Similarly, renewable energy and waste recycling
businesses can view employees and customers as
stakeholders directly and significantly affected by
the abundance and efficient use of non-human
natural assets (Renner, 2000). As environmental
problems are increasingly recognized as persis-
tent, global, and directly connected to a wide
range of human stakeholders, businesses adopting
stakeholder management orientations will need
to view some aspects of non-human nature as
root cause entities, which deserve being treated
as important organization stakeholders. This will,
in turn, assist these firms in predicting changes
and reducing uncertainty in their external envi-
ronment (Harrison and St. John, 1996).
While many organizations, academics, and
practitioners have adopted more environmentally
aware orientations over the past decade, these
sources of information have not commonly or
expressly included the natural environment, that
is, both the human and non-human environ-
ment, in their listings of stakeholders. One reason
for this exclusion is that the natural environment
is presumed to include everything that exists and
so is incorporated in all human thinking,
including consideration of organizational stake-
holders. Other reasons are that environments
are contexts and therefore do not “hold” any
“stakes”, that the natural environment cannot be
managed, and that the natural environment is
represented by other stakeholders and needs no
particular or separate managerial attention.
However, we believe that the general case is
that managerial decision-makers need to explic-
itly treat the human and non-human natural
environment as one or more primary stake-
holders to enhance the effectiveness of relation-
ships between organizations and the natural
environment. In addition, we believe that envi-
ronments are contexts and more (that is, also
processes and “contents”) deserving of adequate
68 Cathy Driscoll and Mark Starik
managerial attention. We also believe that rela-
tionships between organizations and the natural
environment are managed continuously but
would be done so more prudently in one or
more stakeholder relationships. Finally, given that
the state of the natural environment in many
respects is not improving, we believe one obvious
reason for these negative trends is that, though
environmental NGOs and other environmental
representatives are stronger than ever, these envi-
ronmental stakeholders have not been able to
develop enough effective stakeholder relation-
ships with the natural environment to halt or
reverse these trends. What appears necessary is
that more organizations and individuals treat the
natural environment as one or more primary
stakeholders, so that the plans and actions of
organizations impacting the natural environment
are managed more successfully.
So how do we integrate ecological impact,
ecological interdependence, and longer term
planning into the stakeholder model? A stake-
holder theory legitimated in an ecological
exchange relationship would likely be based more
frequently but not exclusively on a mutual and
caring relationship than only on a contractual,
power, and exchange-based relationship. It would
incorporate both ecological and social sustain-
ability criteria. The focus would be on a systems
context and network based and would comple-
ment current exploratory and manipulation
approaches. An ecosystem-centered, network-
based approach allows for the redefinition of
power, legitimacy, and urgency and the inclu-
sion of other stakeholder criteria, such as
proximity.
It has been suggested that there is little
development in the field of management on
“alternative paradigms, worldviews, images, and
metaphors capable of releasing people and other
elements of nature from domination” (Forbes and
Jermier, 1998, p. 181). How, then, can we incor-
porate alternative perspectives into stakeholder
theory? One example is the intimate and
sustainable relationships many Aboriginal peoples
have had with nature, which could bring addi-
tional insight into stakeholder theory. For
example, some indigenous knowledge holds that
the natural environment, not the firm or its
managers, is the central metaphor (Whiteman,
1997). Rather than our owning the resources of
the Earth, traditional ecological knowledge
suggests that we borrow it from our ancestors and
must protect it for future generations. This
largely untapped knowledge base could inform
stakeholder theory by recasting the firm as a
stakeholder of nature, similar to an open system
approach that views the natural environment as
the open system and with organizations as some
of the components. The theoretical question
becomes “who or what really counts in nature”?
What are other alternatives to Western ideas of
progress and development that frame our current
understanding of stakeholders and nature (cf.
Banerjee, 2000)? Some of the world’s religious
leaders have addressed the need for humans to
reduce their impact on nature as well. For
example, Pope John Paul II recently referred to
humanity living an “environmental emergency”
and emphasized that protecting the environment
is a “moral and spiritual duty” (Reuters, June 25,
2002). The business community needs to listen
to the perspectives of diverse stakeholders to
learn of different standards of moral behavior
related to stakeholder management. The inte-
gration of Aboriginal, traditional, and spiritual
forms of knowledge into stakeholder theory may
help management scholars and practitioners to
re-evaluate many of the short sighted assumptions
that accompany our stakeholder theories and
practices.
It has been suggested that some management
theories have provided “dangerous normative
implications” (Ghoshal and Moran, 1996, p. 15).
Normative stakeholder theory should address the
question of who “should” have power and legit-
imacy. The way that organizational researchers
frame issues, such as stakeholders and stakeholder
attributes, guides both stakeholder management
and future research on the topic. A possible
research area would be the study of similarities
between other marginalized stakeholders, such as
future generations, elderly, children, disabled,
developing countries, and the natural environ-
ment. The stakeholder – natural environment
relationship has some obvious ties to the topics
of endangered human species, environmental
racism, and intra- and inter-generational distrib-
 The Primordial Stakeholder
utive justice, as well as to environmental scarcity
and violent conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1994).
VI. Conclusion
In this article, we have argued that the
natural environment should be seen as the pri-
mordial and primary stakeholder of all firms,
deserving of immediate attention by management
researchers and practitioners. We have suggested
some ways to incorporate eco-sustainability
criteria into the stakeholder concept by reframing
the stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy,
and urgency and by adding the stakeholder
attribute of proximity. We encourage further
development of both normative and descriptive
theories of stakeholder identification and salience,
which view the natural environment as one or
more primary stakeholders of the firm. We
believe that it is no longer sufficient to simply
equip managers with a “systematically compre-
hensible” set of stakeholders (Mitchell et al.,
1997, p. 857). Managers have to embrace “bewil-
dering complexity” and “excessive complica-
tions” related to stakeholder management the
same way they accept complexity and uncertainty
related to “the behavior of the market, the deliv-
eries of suppliers, the attitudes of shareholders,
the behavior of competitors, the future actions
of governmental agencies, and so on” (Cyert and
March, 1992, p. 166). We recognize that the
complexity and interconnectedness of global
ecosystems make it difficult for managers to
determine specific impacts on these systems.
However, as scientific evidence increases and fills
more of these gaps in our knowledge, ignorance
and scientific uncertainty can no longer be used
as excuses for denial or inaction. Although acting
on behalf of the natural environment daily may
be difficult for managers, aspects of non-human
nature can be and in many cases need to be
prioritized as one or more primary stakeholders
by business organizations. Although environ-
mental advocates such as the Sierra Club, the
World Wildlife Fund, the Canadian National
Round Table on the Environment and the
Economy, the U.S. President’s Council for
Sustainable Development, and many others have
69
been active and effective in bringing ecological
issues before corporate decision makers, managers
must consider the natural environment as a salient
stakeholder. By including nature as a stakeholder
deserving of managerial salience, we recognize
the inherent interdependency between the global
economy and the global ecology and promote
longer-term, more ecologically responsible
thinking and action in business organizations. In
the meantime, the stakeholder status of the
natural environment continues to be a salient
topic for discourse among management scholars
and practitioners. This article has advanced the
conversation and our hope is that others will
continue to develop it.
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Cathy Driscoll
Saint Mary’s University,
Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada
E-mail: cathy.driscoll@stmarys.ca
Mark Starik
The George Washington University,
School of Business and Public Management,
Department of Strategic Management
and Public Policy,
Washington, D.C. 20052,
U.S.A.
E-mail: starik@gwu.edu
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