Stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder engagement is the process by which an organisation involves people who may be affected by the decisions it makes, or can influence the implementation of its decisions. They may support or oppose the decisions, be influential in the organization or within the community in which it operates, hold relevant official positions or be affected in the long term.

Stakeholder engagement is a key part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and achieving the triple bottom line. Companies engage their stakeholders in dialogue to find out what social and environmental issues matter most to them about their performance in order to improve decision-making and accountability. Engaging stakeholders is a requirement of the Global Reporting Initiative, a network-based organisation with sustainability reporting framework that is widely used around the world. The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) requires stakeholder engagement for all their new standards.

Involving stakeholders in decision-making processes is not confined to corporate social responsibility (CSR) processes. It's a tool used by mature private and public sector organisations, especially when they want to develop understanding and agree to solutions on complex issues or issues of concern.

An underlying principle of stakeholder engagement is that stakeholders have the chance to influence the decision-making process. This differentiates stakeholder engagement from communications processes that seek to issue a message or influence groups to agree with a decision that is already made. The UK organization The Environment Council developed the Principles of Authentic Engagement. These are intended to provide a framework for genuine stakeholder engagement.

Jeffrey (2009) in "Stakeholder Engagement: A Road map to meaningful engagement" describes seven core values for the practices of gaining meaningful participation of which perhaps the three most critical are:

The practitioners in stakeholder engagement are often businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor organizations, trade and industry organizations, governments, and financial institutions.

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