Journal of Social Service and Welfare Volume 2, Issue 1, 2020, PP 23-32 ISSN 2642-8423 Journal of Social Service and Social Welfare V2 ● I1 ● 2020 23 Exploring the Influence of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Corporate Sustainability Adoption: Institutional- Legitimacy Perspective Lamin B. Ceesay* Graduate School of Economics and Legal Sciences, University of Verona,Verona, Italy. *Corresponding Author: Lamin B. Ceesay, Graduate School of Economics and Legal Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy. INTRODUCTION There is growing adoption of corporate sustainability practice in both for-profit and not- for-profit organizations. This proliferation is largely due to the increasing concerns for social, environmental and economic factors in which we assume shared responsibility(Burritt and Schaltegger, 2010; O‘Dwyer et al., 2010). For- profit corporation, sustainability practice comes mainly in the form of corporate social responsibilities (CRS) performance and reporting (see Ahmed and Karpik, 1989; Janggu et al., 2014).Several reasons accounts for the adoption of sustainability practices by corporations such as the regulatory pressuresby the General Reporting Initiative (GRI) (Hahn and Kühnen, 2013), pressure from environmental activists, and NGOsactivism (Guay and Doh, 2006;Guay et al., 2017; Crespy and Miller, 2011; Arenas et al., 2009), and as industry best practices or managerial concern towards non-managerial stakeholders(Li et al., 2018;Thijssens, et al., 2016; Janggu et al., 2014). NGOs continue to strengthen their efforts to raise environmental awareness through public awareness campaigns. NGOs‘ believe that environmentally conscious public will eventually force companies to improve their environmental performance (Asfaw et al., 2017) using various mechanisms such as sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement(Aras and Crowther, 2008). However, studies debate whether corporate governance systems and practices should continue to converge on the Anglo- American shareholder-value-oriented modelor the stakeholder model (Krenn, 2016;Brammer, Jackson and Matten, 2012). Describing the latter as the―best‖ alternative model that is inclusive towards a more equitable and wealthier world in which the natural environment and culture are preserved for generations to come.Based on this thinking, weargue that stakeholder perspective is a critical enabler of full disclosure of financial, social and environmental information, providing a dialogue between a company and its essential non- managerial stakeholders. This offers companies the ability to ―provide information on a company‘s activities that legitimise their behaviour to educate and inform, and change perceptions and expectations‖of broader stakeholders (Michelon and Parbonetti, 2012; Cramer-Montes, 2017). Despite the growing adoption of corporate sustainability programs, many corporations in Africa and other developing economies remind ABSTRACT This review seeks to examine the power and influence of NGOs in the course of corporate sustainability adoption (i.e. sustainability reporting). Using the institutional-legitimacy and governance theories, our findings suggest that NGOs has great potentials in sustainability discourse through two salient actions, namely (1) collaborative partnership, and (2) confrontational tactics. While the former promotes stakeholder involvement in corporate decision making through dialogue, joint-projects on CSR, and sustainability reporting, the latter, however, is the last resort – involving “naming and shaming” corporations for poor social and environmental performance. The objective of such action is to cause reputational damage to businesses. Finally, it is also observed that crucial to NGO power and influence is the collaboration with government and civil society organizations in the fight for environmental sustainability and accountability. Keywords: Sustainability reporting, NGOs, stakeholder theory, Africa, NGO participation.