Corporate social reporting and stakeholder accountability: the missing link

The paper critically evaluates the degree of institutional reform, designed to empower stakeholders, and thereby enhance corporate accountability, accompanying current leading edge reporting initiatives.

The paper points out that while over the last few years the degree of administrative reform has certainly been substantial in terms of the production of new accountings, the questions arise as to whether exclusive reliance on the "business case" to encourage such initiatives is capable of promoting institutional reform sufficient to empower organisational stakeholders, so that this potential heightened accountability may be realised.

The paper finds that:

• administrative (reporting) reform is viewed in isolation from any necessary institutional reform which may provide the means for stakeholders to hold company directors accountable for actions affecting their vital interests
• whilst the corporate lobby apparently espouses a commitment to stakeholder responsiveness, and even accountability, their claims are pitched at the level of mere rhetoric which ignores key issues such the establishment of rights and transfer of power to stakeholder groups
• the very ambiguity and indeterminacy with which the concepts of stakeholding and sustainability have been imbued explains a great deal of its appeal
• for stakeholder accountability to be established and associated reporting exercises to be meaningful in empowerment terms, a far more pluralistic form of corporate governance must be instituted than is currently in place
• it is fallacious to imagine that accountability to stakeholders can be established by reporting reform alone.