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

The recent debate about the role of financial markets in the climate crisis raises questions about the authority of investors to speak about climate change concerns. Leveraging the ‘communication as constitutive of organizations’ (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 twenty utility corporations, we identified how three authoritative personae— that of diplomat, advocate and coach—convey matters of concern regarding corporate carbon
emissions. We also find that the mirroring of these authoritative personae may lead to deliberation, evasion, or rejection of the suggested course of action. We theorise that the communication that underlies shareholder engagement constitutes relational authority through a process of mirroring and switching between authoritative personae. Our analysis advances organisational theory by clarifying the value and limitation of communicative practices such as shareholder engagement in transitioning financial capitalism and by accounting for ventriloquial effects in the constitution of relational authority.