Who cares about ESG? A review of stakeholder perspectives on sustainability ratings

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize sustainability ratings scholarship through a stakeholder lens and propose an agenda for future research. Design/methodology/approach The approach involves a review of the literature on sustainability ratings and the application of a framework grounded in stakeholder theory to understand our current knowledge of ratings. Findings The review identifies eight stakeholder groups with distinct interests in sustainability ratings and suggests future research directions associated with each group. Research limitations/implications The stakeholder categorizations proposed in the paper help to identify limitations in the current state of research and suggest possible areas for future scholarly attention. Originality/value This paper provides an integrative theoretical contribution by systematically applying stakeholder theory to organize a fragmented research stream. While drawing on established concepts, the framework makes implicit distinctions explicit and identifies concrete gaps that can guide future empirical research.