TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain how sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement processes serve as vehicles of dialogic accounting (DA), a form of critical accounting that creates opportunities for stakeholders to express their opinions, and the influence of dialogic interactions on the content of sustainability reports.Design/methodology/approach Content analysis is used to investigate reports published by 299 companies that have adopted Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. This paper studies how organizations engage stakeholders, the categories of stakeholders that are being addressed, the methods used to support stakeholder engagement, and other features of the stakeholder engagement process. Companies that disclose stakeholder perceptions, the difficulties met in engaging stakeholders, and actions aimed at creating opportunities for different groups of stakeholders to interact were subjects of discussion in a series of semi-structured interviews that focus on DA.Findings Companies often commit themselves to two-way dialogue with their stakeholders, but fully developed frameworks for DA are rare. However, signs of DA emerged in the analysis, thus confirming that sustainability reporting can become a platform for DA systems if stakeholder engagement is effective.Originality/value The findings contribute to the accounting literature by discussing if and how sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement can serve as vehicles of DA. This is accomplished via a research design that is based on in-depth interviews and content analysis of various sustainability reports.
VL  - 32
IS  - 5
SN  - 0951-3574
DO  - 10.1108/AAAJ-09-2017-3158
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-09-2017-3158
AU  - Bellucci Marco
AU  - Simoni Lorenzo
AU  - Acuti Diletta
AU  - Manetti Giacomo
PY  - 2019
Y1  - 2019/01/01
TI  - Stakeholder engagement and dialogic accounting: Empirical evidence in sustainability reporting
T2  - Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 1467
EP  - 1499
Y2  - 2024/05/12
ER  -