Stakeholder engagement is the process by which an organization involves people who may be affected by the decisions it makes or can influence the implementation of its decisions. They may support or oppose the decisions, be influential in the organization or within the community in which it operates, hold relevant official positions or be affected in the long term.

Stakeholder engagement is a key part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and achieving the triple bottom line. Companies engage their stakeholders in dialogue to find out what social and environmental issues matter most to them and involve stakeholders in the decision-making process.

Stakeholder engagement is used by mature organizations in the private and public, especially when they want to develop understanding and agreement around solutions on complex issues and large projects.

An underlying principle of stakeholder engagement is that stakeholders have the chance to influence the decision-making process. A key part of this is multistakeholder governance. This differentiates stakeholder engagement from communications processes that seek to issue a message or influence groups to agree with a decision that is already made.

Jeffery (2009) in "Stakeholder Engagement: A Roadmap to meaningful engagement" describes seven core values for the practices of gaining meaningful participation of which perhaps the three most critical are:

The practitioners in stakeholder engagement are often businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor organizations, trade and industry organizations, governments, and financial institutions.

Engaging stakeholder is a requirement of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The GRI is a network-based organization with a sustainability reporting framework that is widely used around the world.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has put forward a framework for sustainability (ISO 26000 - Guidance on social responsibility) that also requires stakeholder engagement.