Mirroring and switching authoritative personae: A ventriloquial analysis of shareholder engagement on carbon emissions

Abstract

We examine how the authority of investors to speak about climate change with corporations is established. Leveraging the ‘communication as constitutive of organisations’ (CCO) perspective, we analyse who speaks on behalf of whom (or what) in shareholder engagement on corporate carbon emissions. Based on access to private dialogues between an engager acting on behalf of a pool of investors with 20 utility corporations, we identify how three authoritative personae—that of diplomat, advocate, and coach—convey climate change concerns. We find that the mirroring of these authoritative personae by corporations may lead to deliberation, evasion, or rejection of the suggested courses of action. We theorise how relational authority is communicatively constituted in shareholder engagement through a process of mirroring and switching between authoritative personae. Our framework contributes to the study of CCO and relational authority by highlighting how meta-figures are used by external actors in an attempt to author appropriate corporate actions. We discuss the implications of our framework for the role of shareholder engagement in current attempts at greening financial capitalism.

The Impact of Sustainable Investing: A Multidisciplinary Review

“…Related research documents that shareholder dialogue is more likely to succeed when shareholders establish more intensive contact with companies (Barko et al, 2022) and when the dialogue unfolds as deliberative interactions in which shareholders and companies provide reasons for what they ask and show respect for each other (Beccarini et al, 2023). Slager et al (2023, p. 1) further show that shareholders use three ‘personae’ – that of a diplomat, advocate, and coach – to build relationships with companies and establish ‘relational authority’.…”