Are you doing it right? On the relationship between social and dialogic accounting

This study addresses the role of social, environmental, or sustainability (SES) reporting as a tool and vehicle of dialogic accounting (DA), while also analyzing the role of stakeholder engagement in defining the contents of these reports. We empirically investigated the reports published in 2016 by a group of 299 companies that adopt the guidelines issued by Global Reporting Initiative. Through a content analysis, we investigated the role attributed by the organizations to the practice of engaging with stakeholders, the categories of stakeholders addressed, the stated methodologies for stakeholder engagement, and other features of the stakeholder engagement process. We then focused our attention on three particular aspects that could represent signals of DA practices: the disclosure of stakeholder perceptions, the disclosure of difficulties met in engaging with stakeholders and the communication of actions aimed at creating opportunities for different groups of stakeholders to interact. Companies showing these features have been the object of a deeper analysis, based on semi-structured interviews. Our results show that companies often actively commit themselves in a two-way dialogue with their stakeholders, despite a great variety of behaviours. Our study also shows that fully developed frameworks for DA are rare. However, potential signs of DA emerged from our analysis, confirming that SES reporting has the potential to become a platform where to develop DA systems if stakeholder engagement processes are effective.