Purpose

This paper aims to explore the key issues and challenges that can affect the quality of stakeholder engagement processes and outcomes in relation to sustainability reporting.

Design/methodology/approach

Case study research was used to gain in-depth insights into the stakeholder engagement practices of three Australian local councils.

Findings

The findings of this study suggest that the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement can be undermined by certain difficulties and challenges faced by an organisation. These include limited resources, lack of commitment from internal stakeholders, political factors, heterogeneous concerns, inadequate representation and an unwillingness to engage.

Research limitations/implications

The study adds to the limited literature on stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting specifically and on sustainability accounting and reporting in public sector organisations (PSOs) more generally.

Practical implications

This research provides practical guidance to government authorities on the challenges that need to be addressed to enable an effective stakeholder engagement process for sustainability reporting.

Social implications

Stakeholders have a critical role in holding organisations accountable and research into their engagement with these organisations has societal benefits.

Originality/value

This research while focused on the Australian context has international relevance as it provides unique insights into the stakeholder engagement process. The implications of this research apply to not just PSOs but also corporations that are grappling with the (difficult) process of effective engagement with stakeholders.

This issue of the GSoD In Focus explores the contribution that the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Indices can make to the review of progress on the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The GSoD Indices can be used to complement the official indicators of the SDGs, to acquire in-depth knowledge on trends in achieving the specific targets of individual SDGs. In this regard, the GSoD Indices can be used to provide data on the SDGs for poverty (SDG 1), hunger (2), health and wellbeing (3), education (4), gender equality (5), inequalities (10), sustainable cities and communities (11), peace, justice and institutions (16), and partnerships for the goals (17), as well as across the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The large-scale settlement of hundreds of thousands of individuals from the New Commonwealth countries into Britain since World War II has brought into sharp relief issues of race, class, and equal opportunity in the United Kingdom. Significant research on racism and social change in Britain has emerged over the past two decades (see Solomos, 1989; Braham, Rattansi, and Skellington, 1992; Gilroy, 1987; Rex and Tomlinson, 1979; Sivanandan, 1982; Goulbourne, 1990). Much of this research has focused on the changing racial character of British immigration policy, the impact of the black vote on the fate of the Labour party in national elections, and the election of black members to parliament from predominantly black boroughs in London. Only recently has serious attention been given to the local politics of race in Britain outside the London metropolitan area (see Ben-Tovim, Gabriel, Law, and Stredder, 1986; Goulbourne, 1990).

This paper fulfills the much-needed research gap by the exploring the unknown contribution of CBOs in Pakistan. The paper has added value to the current literature by highlighting that unless there is strong political will and eagerness of local bureaucracy to give up their powers, the inclusion of citizen participation through CBOs in decision making of local government would just be a futile exercise.

In recent years many countries across the world, especially in Africa, have created large numbers of new local administrative units. This trend has largely gone unnoticed in the scholarly community, with no attempts to understand the underlying processes at work. To examine this phenomenon I take the case study of Uganda, one of the more prominent ‘donor darlings’ of the 1990s. Alongside large-scale economic and political reforms Uganda has also experienced a near explosion in the number of districts (the highest level of local government), going from 39 to 79 in less than a decade. I examine six potential reasons why these districts might have been created, and argue, through the use of election results, interviews and other data, that district creation has been primarily a source of patronage in the ongoing need for Museveni to win elections. I conclude with reflections on the relationship between economic and political reforms and patronage in the developing world.