Integrating environmental and stakeholder management

Regulation has been an important instrument in pushing the business community towards improved environmental performance. However, there has also been increasing pressure from a growing number of stakeholders, including employees, customers, neighbours, NGOs etc. In order to improve corporate relationships with various stakeholders, companies need to be able to identify these stakeholders and assess their influence. The first part of this paper will discuss the relevant theory and introduce a model to analyse and identify the most significant stakeholder groups and their influence on corporate behaviour. Based on a recent survey of Danish companies, the second part of the paper will report on the success of a variety of stakeholders in forcing companies to introduce environment‐related initiatives. The results will then be discussed in light of the theory and other reported results. The paper closes with a discussion of research implications.