The Role of Stakeholders in Sustainability Reporting and in Strategy Elaboration in Non-Profit Organizations

The aim of the article is to investigate the role of stakeholder engagement and participation in sustainability reporting and in strategy elaboration in non-profit organizations. We analyze the role of stakeholders in the two above mentioned research fields according to the literature on third sector and on stakeholder theory. To verify the levels of involvement, we conducted an empirical analysis on a sample of forty-two sustainability reports of non-profit organizations included in the Global Reporting Initiative database at the date of 31st October 2011. The survey showed that there are some criticisms regarding stakeholder participation in the two targeted research fields, especially in sustainability reporting. These criticisms are considered in our conclusions. In the light of the above, questions for the future are whether stakeholder engagement is moving from being simply a way to consult and influence stakeholders to being an effective instrument for involving them in non-profit organizations’ decision making, through mutual commitment.