Promoting societal governance: Stakeholders' engagement disclosure on Malaysian local authorities' websites

Stakeholder engagement has grown in significance today and has become one of the important elements in advancing sustainability agenda in the public sectors. This study aimed to determine the extent of stakeholder engagement disclosure using the coercive isomorphism tenet. Adopting a modified stakeholder engagement index to measure the extent of stakeholder engagement disclosure, the unit of analysis for this study consisted of 108 Malaysian local council websites. To reduce any subjectivity, the disclosure index was unweighted that encompassed 40 items. Based on the findings, it appears that there were low-level disclosures of stakeholder engagement information on the Malaysian local authorities' websites, which were inclusive of only 12 out of 40 items (30%). One of the most important practical implications of this study was to highlight the ability of local governments in developing countries, such as Malaysia, for being able to disseminate stakeholder engagement information through their websites to increase greater transparency and accountability, which in turn, advancing sustainable development in the public sectors.