Central Banks’ Commitment to Stakeholders: CSR in the Eurosystem: 2006–2016

Central banks’ commitment towards public interest goes beyond monetary policy. A wide range of areas is under the accountability of Central Banks (price and financial stability, services for the economy – e.g. economic analysis, payments, financial education, customer protection), with specific responsibilities toward external and internal stakeholders. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Stakeholder Management (SM) should be under the management attention and care in Central Banks. The academic literature about Central Banking ignores these topics: some theoretical thoughts about this absence are presented. The paper, following a first explorative approach, tries to assess the attention towards CSR in communication practices of Central Banks in Eurosystem (ECB and NCBs), applying text analysis tools to annual reports in the post crisis years (2007–2017). Our findings could make visible the development degree of communication practices and could generate some useful insights for designing CSR and SM framework and relative communication tools in Central Banks.