Corporate Reporting, Stakeholders and the Internet: Mapping the New Corporate Landscape

Abstract

The paper considers the way in which the development of the Internet and the increasing access to it by individuals have provided such individuals with increasing power to make their respective voices heard. It also considers the way in which corporations, through their use of the Internet to present themselves and their activities and to communicate with individuals, have affected the use of the Internet. Through a construction of the archaeology of corporate reporting, this is shown to be a natural extension of this reporting. An examination of such Internet reporting is undertaken to demonstrate that the Internet is more liberating for corporations than for individuals and that the role of the Internet for individuals remains as a mechanism for protest rather than for the acquisition of a more equal power relationship with the dominant forms of organisation within society.