Stakeholder Democracy: Challenges and Contributions from Accountancy

The recent emphasis on examining organisation/stakeholder relationships encompasses perspectives from numerous academic disciplines. This paper locates key elements of the social accounting literature, particularly those dealing with the disclosure of information to stakeholders, within the recent debates surrounding stakeholder democracy in order to illuminate aspects of this burgeoning research area for an interdisciplinary audience. Drawing on this review, the paper argues for a greater focus in social accounting research on stakeholder voices in order to further contribute to the development of stakeholder accountability and democracy. The paper outlines how a core element of social accounting research is infused with a desire to enable stakeholder accountability and democracy. Social accounting scholars perceive clear objectives for social accounting underpinned by principles of democracy, stakeholder accountability and organisational transparency. For them, the overriding purpose of social accounting revolves around making visible the workings of organisations for stakeholders thereby potentially empowering stakeholders to seek more benign organisational activity. Key contributions focused on promoting stakeholder accountability, particularly through (critical) engagement wit