Does the shareholder salience influence the corporate social responsibility of entities from energy sector?

The stakeholder salience framework has become, over the past two decades, a tool often used to identify, asses and prioritize stakeholders and has demonstrated considerable theoretical and managerial implications. The objective of this paper is to determine to what extent stakeholder salience influences how different stakeholder categories are represented in the sustainability reports of entities from energy sector. In this respect, an interpretative content-based analysis of the social and environmental information disclosed by entities is used. The sample encompasses six energy entities that are comprised of Dow Jones Sustainability Europe Index (DJSI) constituent’s list on September 19, 2016. The results highlight that stakeholders who hold power have a high score of salience, being followed by those who possess legitimacy and then by those who possess urgency. The obtained results suggest the need to continue to focus on the normative theory of the stakeholders. The results also highlight that there is a link between the stakeholder salience, on the one hand, and the number and type of attributes held by each category of stakeholders, on the other hand. Stakeholders who hold power have a high score of salience, being followed by those who possess legitimacy and by those who possess urgency.