Resumo

Increasing complexity in the business environment has driven companies to engage in engaging practices as a way to achieve global sustainable development by creating value and competitive advantages not only for their shareholders but also for all of their stakeholders (Collins, Kearins, Roper, 2005; Hart, Sharma, 2004).The process or strategy of gaining competitive advantage through the development of stakeholder relationships is called stakeholder engagement (Heugens; Bosch; Riel, 2002).

In the last few years, greater attention has been given to thinking about what it means to engage stakeholders (Johnson-Cramer et al. 2004). In order to assess the nature, quality and extent of these relationships firms and stakeholders, this paper presents a classification and an analysis of the resulting classification of stakeholder engagement as reported in GRI reports. So, the aim of this work is to present a criteria of analysis to identify and classify the level of engagement with stakeholders.

In today's world, stakeholders as employees, suppliers, customers and others who are engaged in the business are much more likely to collaborate and support the activities and the strategy of the corporations, with positive impact to the sustainability and evolution of the future of their companies (Freeman, 2017). According to Noland &Phillips, one topic that has not, until recently, received as much attention is the appropriate nature of firms’ engagement with their stakeholders.

For this study, the bibliographical research method was used to gather information about the concept of stakeholder engagement and about the different types of engagement existing in the literature. Secondly, GRI sustainability reports from the Energy Sector were selected from the database - Global Reporting Initiative, published in the year 2016. The database was constituted of 119 reports. The reports were analyzed considering the proposed method of evaluating the level of engagement of the activities with the stakeholders, classifying them according to the levels proposed by this work.

From the data analysis it is possible to identify the salience of stakeholders and those more prioritized according to the actions of the companies. To support the data analysis, different indicators were used to classify the countries from the analyzed reports. The indicators used were economic (Income Level), social (HDI) and engagement (OECD). Finally, the analysis of all stakeholders’ engagement actions divided by levels under the classification model proposed in this paper have made possible to identify and define clear differences among companies’ engagement strategies.

Based on the analysis and discussion of the different levels of stakeholder engagement it was possible to observe that the strategies in stakeholder management and engagement actions vary across countries and companies. The classification method applied at this paper which has allowed us to identify different trends on how companies under various contexts (social, economic, etc.) choose to engage their identified stakeholders either in terms of the number of stakeholders as well as the level of engagement as part of their communication strategies.

Freeman, R.E. (1984). Strategic Management: a stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman,85-101. Freeman, R.E. (2017). Stakeholder Management. Business and Society 360, Volume 1, 1-20. Emerald Publishing Limited. Greenwood, M. (2007). Stakeholder engagement: Beyond the myth of corporate responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 74(4), 315-327. Noland, J., & Phillips, R. (2010). Stakeholder engagement, discourse ethics and strategic management. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), 39-49.