Green stakeholders: Industry interpretations and response

This paper argues that industrial responses to 'green' pressures may fruitfully be explored using a stakeholder framework. However, the common view of an objective configuration of stakeholders is replaced with one that favours an interpretive perspective. Managers are viewed as crucial mediators of stakeholder influence; how they identify, define and construct stakeholders is an important feature of the meaning of greening, and an industry's subsequent response. A qualitative study of managers in four UK industries - supermarkets, automotives, power and chemicals - is reported. The effect of a small number of stakehoIders - campaigners and regulators is examined in some detail, distinguished differentially according to their perceived legitimacy and the threat they pose to industry. Also examined is the large group of traditionally powerful stakehoIders - customers, creditors and employees - who fail markedly to impact on industry's greening. The implications of the findings for pro-environmental change and stakeholder theory are discussed.