The Influence of External Stakeholders on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Reporting: Toward a Conceptual Framework for ESG Disclosure

In recent years, governments and investors globally are compelling major corporate organizations to disclose important environmental, social and gov-ernance (ESG) issues. The continued flatlining of ESG reporting quality has led some parties to call on policy -makers to take advantage of the distinct contextual pres-sure from external stakeholders to improve corporate ESG commitments. However, the relationship between external stakeholders and ESG disclosure remains am-biguous, both theoretically and empirically. Grounded in stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, resource-based theory, and slack resource theory, this article reconcep-tualizes Ullmann's 1985 model of corporate social per-formance to present a novel conceptual framework to examine the external stakeholder s-ESG disclosure re-lationship. This article contributes to the literature by illustrating the mediating effect of the strategic posture and the moderating effect of corporate financial perfor-mance on corporate ESG discourse perpetuated by pow-erful stakeholders.