Linking Sustainability-related Stakeholder Feedback to Corporate Sustainability Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Stakeholder Dialogues

Based on a dataset of large German companies, this paper investigates the link between corporate sustainability performance and sustainability-related feedback by stakeholders. In the analysis, no a priori link between sustainability performance and related stakeholder feedback can be observed. Using stakeholder theory as a theoretical underpinning, we therefore statistically investigate whether the application of stakeholder dialogues can help companies to link their sustainability performance to stakeholder feedback. We find that stakeholder dialogues indeed help to establish such a link, as companies which improve their sustainability performance and simultaneously communicate with stakeholders using stakeholder dialogues are most likely to experience a decrease in sustainability-related stakeholder criticism.