Nature as a Stakeholder : The case of the Turin-Lyon high-speed rail

Most of the time the natural environment has not been granted the stakeholder status of the firm, although, this does not exclude the potential that it has of receiving such recognition (Driscoll and Starik,2004). Since for the environment itself, it might be hard to define a proper stake inside companies, managers, find themselves in a key position to allow the amplification of nature’s voice in business, contributing to set a new vision inside the firm, that could influence and enhance long term and sustainable decisions. Drawing on a newly developed stakeholder-driven approach called: B2N (Business to Nature), which finds its roots inside a Finnish research group set up in 2014, the natural environment can find stakeholder recognition. B2N will serve as a framework to facilitate beneficial and mutual partnerships between human stakeholders and the natural world. Indeed, modern conservation approaches, together with learning from nature are still not enough, and neither are current approaches to sustainable innovation that focus on creating ‘less impactful or less bad’ products and services, rather than focusing on a solid and integrated relationship with nature. Notwithstanding the discussion on stakeholder’s status of nature, literature, in general, acknowledges that nature is essential to businesses and organizations as it gives valuable and indispensable resources, plus it carries the moral right to be included in the business decision making. Considering nature as a stakeholder of the firm will enable managers to address sustainability issues in a more integrative way since this will bring benefits such as the widening of the management decisions perspectives (Starik,1995); it will allow a more prudent prioritization of the firm’s actions (Carroll,1989), it will fully incorporate the environment into corporate culture and politics, and finally particularize stakeholders for building greater familiarity with them (Starik,1995). This dissertation has therefore the goal to explore and experiment, a niche and subtle argument founded inside the macro field of stakeholder theory, where still a limited number of empirical studies have found a match with the literature; contributing in this way to the enhancement of the related academic research, together with the strengthening of the prominent role that nature can play at the corporate level. It will be examined nature’s presence and its potential inclusion inside the stakeholder network of the firm in charge of the construction of the megaproject Turin-Lyon railway line. Qualitative data was obtained and critically analyzed from different interviews addressed to diverse managerial positions. Firstly, it was examined if nature was or not recognized as a holder of interest and in which manner this status emerged. In addition, an investigation was carried over the sentiment and relationship that the interviewee had with nature itself. Further, a significant predisposition and capability for the application of the B2N approach were found inside this complex firm under scrutiny.