Stakeholder Theory Is Dead: Toward an Eco-Centric Ethics

Stakeholder theory has long functioned as the normative “operating system” of business ethics, civilizing corporate discourse through the language of balancing interests. Yet in the Anthropocene, where planetary boundaries are binding and ecological thresholds are non-negotiable, this orthodoxy collapses. Its axioms of anthropocentrism, commensurability, and managerial arbitration fail in the face of scale effects, tipping points, and non-substitutable ecological functions. This essay advances an alternative: eco-centric ethics. Six axioms reframe responsibility around the intrinsic value of the more-than-human, strong sustainability, ecological limits as deontic constraints, precaution under irreversibility, intergenerational justice, and relational accountability. These principles generate concrete guardrails, negative lists, duties of result, and portfolio exits that subordinate stakeholder dialogue to the integrity of ecological ceilings. The implications are threefold: researchers must move beyond instrumental stakeholder models and retire aggregated ESG scores; managers must embed limits-first governance and ecological veto roles; and policymakers must replace disclosure regimes with binding constraints. The age of balancing our way out of collapse is over; business ethics must recenter life itself as the non-negotiable ground of responsibility.