No company is an island: A study exploring stakeholder engagement for sustainability

Stakeholder engagement is considered, by both researchers and practitioners, an increasingly important aspect of corporate sustainability, and it is argued that companies should work together with their stakeholders to address the substantial social and environmental challenges ahead. Because of its importance, scholars within stakeholder theory and corporate sustainability have called for more research on how stakeholder engagement is conducted. This thesis, based on interviews with sustainability executives representing 18 Nordic companies, explores how companies work to engage stakeholders in their sustainability work. The study indicates that stakeholder engagement is an important part of the companies’ sustainability work, and that the companies are dependent on working together with stakeholders. It also highlights that even though stakeholder engagement occurs on a range of different levels, from one-way communication to strategic collaborations, education and information sharing efforts appear to be the most common. The companies in the study advocate for engaging with all stakeholders, but three stakeholder groups are considered particularly important due to their impact on the companies: customers, investors, and employees. Finally, transparency, openness, and listening are considered important success factors for stakeholder engagement, whereas lack of resources is seen as the overarching challenge