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Sustainability and stakeholder engagement are closely interrelated; the former is virtually unachievable without the latter. While the corporation is increasingly paying lip service to stakeholder engagement, in practice there is much room for improvement. This lack of stakeholder engagement increases risks to the corporation and minimises its business opportunities. This article introduces a management tool, the stakeholder dashboard, which sustainability consultants can implement to help their clients improve stakeholder engagement by offering management vital stakeholder information at a glance. Its primary goal is to raise awareness and facilitate discussion among the corporation's management about the corporation's stakeholders. Through the systematised, periodic generation of the stakeholder dashboard, a reactionary environment can be combated by highlighting key stakeholders' impressions toward the corporation in near 'real time' and can help the corporation identify gaps where it is 'frying blind'. Measuring stakeholder perceptions is nothing new, but these perceptions are seldom (if ever) pulled together in a single dashboard and charted over time to give management a holistic view of the corporation's stakeholders.
* Stakeholder engagement
* Corporate responsibility
* Corporate reputation
* Sustainability
* Management tool
* Consulting
* Cooperative advantage
I BELIEVE THAT RUNNING A CORPORATION IN A SUSTAINABLE MANNER IS virtually unachievable without strong stakeholder engagement. I believe that, while the corporation is increasingly paying lip service to stakeholder engagement, in practice there is much room for improvement. I believe this lack of stakeholder engagement increases risks to the corporation and minimises its business opportunities. I also believe that a great deal of success of the modern-day corporation lies in the adoption of systematically measuring the many facets of business. Conversely, I believe that items that are not systematically measured have a greater likelihood of being neglected. For these reasons, I believe there is great opportunity for the corporation to improve its stakeholder engagement through the systematic measurement of stakeholders' perceptions and collection of these measurements into a single dashboard.
In this article I will attempt to demonstrate the basis for these beliefs and offer a tool that sustainability consultants can use to help their clients improve stakeholder engagement-the stakeholder dashboard.
Why now?
Why is there now a need for a concerted effort to systemise stakeholder engagement? Much of the answer lies in the...