• Stakeholder involvement

Citizen participation and stakeholder involvement

This paper presents a global survey amongst PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) clients and relations in order to get a better insight into why companies seek assurance on their Corporate Responsibility (CR) reports, and if and how they use stakeholder panels. The authors ask specialists in the field about this development.

The survey found that stakeholder panels now play an important part in CSR reporting by enhancing credibility. While an assurance provider can comment on whether a company is ‘reporting things right’, the stakeholder panel can say whether the company is ‘reporting the right thing’. Companies also believe panels provide a useful link between strategy and business goals and the expectations of stakeholders. Independent auditors, as assurance providers, can support the opinions of the panel and provide expertise and training on standards.

Key concluding points include:

• stakeholder panels are important in the development of CR reporting. They can be the link between a company’s strategy and business goals on the one hand and stakeholders expectations on the other. They play a central role in the materiality determination process for CR reporting
  
• independent auditors can complement the stakeholder panel’s opinion by providing assurance on the materiality process and performing audit work on the reported performance and data. They can also support stakeholder panels by providing expertise and knowledge on standards
  
• formal assurance providers -like audit firms- and stakeholder panels can complement each other in enhancing the credibility of CR reports
  
• although assurance providers have the skills and procedures in place to execute a solid assessment, stakeholder panels can partly fill in this gap by giving their opinion on that information in the report, based on their expertise

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