The track would like to examine the influence of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors on stakeholder engagement according to AI.
It has been seventy years since Bowen (1953) first defined Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as the obligations of businessmen to pursue policies, make decisions, and follow courses of action that are desirable in terms of societal objectives and values. Bowen asserted that businessmen, as servants of society, should not overlook socially accepted values or prioritize their values over those of society. While Bowen did not define who represents society or what its values are, he firmly stated that businessmen should voluntarily assume social responsibility by guiding their actions accordingly, as an alternative to increased governmental control over the economy.
From a more typical business economics perspective, CSR can be defined as the proactive, dynamic result of a social strategy “aimed at obtaining lasting consensus from various social stakeholder groups that provide the company with needed resources and support” (V. Coda, 1995).
Stakeholders are groups that can influence or are influenced by the achievement of an organization’s purpose. Stakeholder theory classifies stakeholders as primary, those on which the company depends for its survival, and secondary, whose contribution is non-essential. Primary stakeholders generally include owners, partners, shareholders, employees, business intermediaries, customers and suppliers. Secondary stakeholders generally include the local and international community, supervisory bodies, local authorities, public interest groups, protest movements, business associations, competitors, trade unions, and the media.
To manage stakeholders, a company should ask itself five key questions:
1) Who are the company’s generic and specific stakeholders?
2) What interests do they represent and what power does each group have?
3) What opportunities and challenges do stakeholders present?
4) What economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities does the company have towards its stakeholders?
5) What strategies should the company undertake to best manage its stakeholders?
Stakeholder engagement (SE) involves an organization’s practices for positively involving stakeholders in its activities, through identifying, consulting, communicating, dialoguing and collaborating with them. SE can be viewed as a mechanism for building trust, enhancing fairness, and achieving consensus, cooperation, accountability and effective governance.
A fundamental element of SE, after stakeholder identification through mapping, is determining the negotiation object or “claimed” interest (E.R. Freman, 1984). This shift focuses to how companies communicate and dialogue with individual stakeholders and consequently, how the company is viewed and evaluated (L. O’Riordan et al.,2014).
In 2004, the Global Compact first coined the ESG acronym, representing environmental, social, and governance factors. The premise was that financial markets have an interest in contributing to better environmental and social management for global sustainable development by defining effective governance, to make markets more stable and enduring.
Artificial intelligence (AI) as technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.
In summary, the question is: have stakeholder engagement strategies been influenced by the advent of ESG factors, and if so, what is the role of AI?

Maria Zifaro, Mercatorum University, Italy
Andrea Presciutti, Mercatorum University, Italy
Giovanni Spatola, Mercatorum University,Italy
Giuseppe Ambrosio, Mercatorum University, Italy
Anna Bisogno, Mercatorum University, Italy