The role of stakeholders in Sydney's green games

This paper focuses on the various roles played by stakeholders in the construction of Sydney Olympics as the Green Games. It draws material from the official website of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, the websites and other material made public by major stakeholders, and the considerable commentary generated by the greening efforts of the games' organizers and their many partners and critics. Sydney's ‘Green Games’ is shown to involve a wide variety of stakeholders in both its construction and deconstruction. Environmental groups both assisted in defining the agenda and, in retaining their independence, reserved the right to evaluate and publicly critique performance. It is argued that through the engagement of stakeholders, organizations can be expected to understand and elucidate the different dimensions of the environmental challenge they face—even though at times, as the Sydney ‘Green Games’ example shows, they may not fully meet these more exacting expectations, and the environmental groups themselves thus risk becoming compromised.