Abstract
One of the main purposes claimed for reporting is the provision of an account to a range of stakeholders regarding how managers have acted in relation to the social, environmental, economic and ethical responsibilities these managers and their corporation feel they have towards stakeholders. Engagement and dialogue initiatives, therefore, are increasingly recognised as crucial elements of this accountability process. Only through stakeholder engagement companies can develop knowledge of what stakeholders believe should be their economic, environmental, ethical and social responsibilities to discharge. This chapter addresses this important aspect of corporate life investigating the role of stakeholder engagement within the reporting process in general, and the Integrated Reporting in particular. After describing the main traits of stakeholder engagement as of the most recent development in the academic literature, this process is placed within the context of Integrated Reporting and various theoretical perspectives that have the potential to prove useful in the interpretation of stakeholder engagement and dialogue practices are introduced.
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Notes
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AccountAbility is a global organisation that works with companies to help them facing the most critical challenges in corporate responsibility and sustainable development. One critical component of this practice consists in building effective approaches to stakeholder engagement (for more details regarding the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard framework, see http://www.accountability.org).
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Rinaldi, L. (2013). Stakeholder Engagement. In: Busco, C., Frigo, M., Riccaboni, A., Quattrone, P. (eds) Integrated Reporting. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02168-3_6
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