‘Stakeholder Theory and Its Antecedents: Taylorism, Fascism, and the Pluralist Alternative’

Recent scholarship positions stakeholder theory as an ethical and democratic response to contemporary authoritarian tendencies in corporate governance. This paper problematises this assumption by showing that many dominant formulations of stakeholder theory reproduce a governance configuration long associated with authoritarianism: the formal recognition of multiple stakeholder voices combined with the retention of ultimate decisional primacy by managerial elites. Drawing on political theory, the history of organisation studies and archival research, we argue that stakeholder theory is internally divided between two divergent trajectories; a unitarist trajectory that legitimises consultation without power, and a pluralist trajectory that embeds enforceable countervailing authority. We develop this argument through a historical reconstruction of three intellectual lineages underpinning stakeholder governance: liberal corporatism, fascist corporatism, and Progressive-era scientific management. While fascist corporatism institutionalised stakeholder representation while centralising authority, Progressive Taylorists articulated a pluralist alternative that linked organisational efficiency to institutionalised power-sharing and by doing so was instrumental in supporting consumer spending and long-lasting economic growth. The paper’s theoretical contribution is threefold. First, it reframes stakeholder theory as a contested political project rather than a unified paradigm. Second, it re-politicises stakeholder governance by reconnecting organisational design to broader structures of political authority. Third, it advances a historically grounded pluralist model of stakeholder democracy capable of countering contemporary forms of corporate and political authoritarianism.