Engaging Stakeholders in Emerging Economies: The Case of Multilatinas

Can multinational companies foster institutional change and sustainable development in emerging countries? A case study

“…This is shown by the agreements of Companies A and C for funding projects that allow a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and in Company B's CSRIN strategies to fight against corruption by reaching agreements with the government. These multistakeholder initiatives extend the previous findings of Doh et al () on public–private partnership in emerging markets and also Davila, Rodriguez‐Lluesma, and Elvira (), who analyse the Latin American MNCs' stakeholders' engagement in the same institutional context.…”

CSR Communication Strategies of Colombian Business Groups: An Analysis of Corporate Reports

“…Another look at ownership indicates that in 40% of the BGs, their majority shareholder was foreign, which is in accordance with the national average of 36% for Colombian BGs [11]. Lastly, it can be highlighted that seven of the BGs (23.3%) were classified as multilatinas by the AmericaEconomia Journal [54], which provides a ranking of multilatinas that has been used in several studies [16,22,37]. This condition indicates that they are BGs with a greater international orientation and are thus exposed to a higher amount of stakeholders.…”

“…However, the stakeholders theory developed by Freeman expands the concept of interest groups that had been discussed at Stanford Research Institute in 1963, and defines it as any individual or group that can affect or be affected by the achievement of a firm's objectives [23] (p. 25). According to Jones [38], the concept of the stakeholder that was introduced by Freeman [22] formally recognizes the importance of the groups or individuals beyond the shareholders that are affected by a firm's actions.…”

“…Under the connotation of stakeholders provided by Freeman [22], these interest groups are recognized as legitimate focuses that must be attended to by firms, since they have the capacity to change a firm's direction, and the management must therefore attend to their demands in such a way that their rights are guaranteed. As pointed out by Friedman and Miles [39], stakeholders must participate, in a certain way, in decisions that substantially affect their own well-being.…”

“…To achieve these three objectives, we applied a content analysis of 30 corporate reports from the year 2015 from BGs that are representative of the Colombian economy. Following Habek and Wolniak [20], Venturelli et al [21], and Davila et al [22], the BG reports under analysis were classified into four categories: annual reports (AR), sustainability reports (SR), combined reports (CR), and integrated reports (IR). We draw on the stakeholders theory [23] and previous studies [24][25][26][27][28] in order to define the stakeholder categories, allowing us to assess the type of orientation presented by the analyzed Colombian BGs.This study is innovative in that it assesses BG stakeholder orientation and their CSR communication strategies by conducting a cross-corporate report analysis in an emerging country such as Colombia, and studying a type of corporate organization (group) whose relationship with CSR has not been sufficiently explored.…”