RRI and Corporate Stakeholder Engagement: The Aquadvantage Salmon Case

Beniamino Callegari,Olga Mikhailova

doi:10.3390/su13041820

Beniamino Callegari, Olga Mikhailova

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041820

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Abstract

Declining public trust in science and innovation triggered the emergence and development of the responsible research and innovation (RRI) concept among policymakers and academics. Engaging stakeholders in the early phases of innovation processes has been identified as a major driver of inclusive, responsible, and sustainable development. Firms however have often adopted practices entirely opposite to those being advocated within the RRI framework, namely, reducing external interaction with stakeholders, focusing on exclusive communication with the scientific community and legal authorities while avoiding the social spotlight. We illustrate these practices, their causes and consequences using the case of the Aquadvantage salmon, the first genetically modified (GM) animal approved to petition for the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human consumption. We find that such practices heighten the risk of social backlash, being undesirable from the perspective of both the organizations involved and society at large. Stakeholder engagement remains necessary in order to gain the minimum social acceptance required for contentious innovative products to enter the market. However, stakeholder engagement must be selective, focused on pragmatic organizations whose aims and interests are sufficiently broad to potentially align with corporate interests. Strategic stakeholder engagement offers a meeting point between the transformative aspirations of RRI framework proponents and legitimate business interests.

Highlights

Scientific progress constantly pushes onwards the boundaries of the possible, as we struggle to understand the implications and cope with the consequences
This research gap has motivated our research question: which factors prevent the implementation of research and innovation (RRI)-inspired principles of stakeholder engagement within actual corporate settings? Our study aims to contribute to the identification of the key factors responsible for the lack of stakeholder engagement, defined as corporate practices to involve stakeholders in a positive manner in organizational activities [11], in current corporate practices, distinguishing between structural features of the market economy and contingent limitation of RRI-informed guidelines
We investigate this problem by analyzing the case of the first genetically modified (GM) animal commercialized for human consumption, the AquAdvantage salmon, and the difficult road that this controversial technology and its proponents have traveled in the last decades

Summary

Introduction

Scientific progress constantly pushes onwards the boundaries of the possible, as we struggle to understand the implications and cope with the consequences. The results so obtained are used to derive practical implications aiming to improve the actual feasibility of RRI integration within the corporate world We investigate this problem by analyzing the case of the first GM animal commercialized for human consumption, the AquAdvantage salmon, and the difficult road that this controversial technology and its proponents have traveled in the last decades. We find that the decision of the company to avoid stakeholder engagement, while not unreasonable, has resulted in decades of legal strife and unprofitability, the resolution of which is still in the future, and not necessarily promising This negative result confirms the practical relevance and potential benefit of RRI-inspired practices of stakeholder integration, and highlights the current gap between RRI principles and their implementation.

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