Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to contribute to the social and environmental accounting literature by studying the role and features of stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting. It discusses corporations' extended responsibilities in contemporary societies and considers the opposition between shareholder and stakeholder theories. The book provides a literature review on sustainability reporting, materiality assessment and stakeholder engagement. It also discusses how the involvement of every relevant group of stakeholders can represent the most straightforward way to produce comprehensive, relevant and material sustainability reports. The book also provides a theoretical framework based on stakeholder theory and the involvement of stakeholders in decision making and sustainability reporting. It adopts a deep empirical focus on how sustainability reports address the topic of stakeholder engagement, the distinctive features of this involvement process and the role of stakeholder engagement in assessing materiality and defining the contents of such a disclosure.