| Summary: | This study emphasises on examining various stakeholder groups' perceptions and requirements and represents an attempt to fill a gap in the CED literature where the views of non-managerial and non-financial stakeholders are largely absent. The study explores the perceptions and requirements of a wide group of stakeholders in the context of a developing county, Libya. This study contributes to that limited stakeholders' perceptions and requirements based CED literature. To achieve the aim of this study, face-to-face semi-structured interviews were adopted as a main instrument to collecting data. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals and senior representatives of various stakeholder groups. The data came from 30 stakeholders from six groups of stakeholders namely: Regulators and Policy Makers; Local Governments; Managers; Employees; Shareholders and Financial Institutions. Content analysis was used to turn qualitative data, which was collected via open-ended questions, into numerical data using NVivo software. A difference of perceptions and requirements of stakeholder groups towards CED was identified from the collected data. In general, stakeholders are interested in, and positively disposed towards CED. However, interviewees generally perceive that CED is fairly significant to business, but current CED practice is viewed negatively and weak. Through the empirical study, the incentives and disincentives for CED are identified. Increasing awareness of environmental issues, market competition, religious obligation, compliance with industrial codes and training programmes appear to be the key driving motivations in the study country, while lack of legal requirements, lack of knowledge/awareness, absence of demand, issues management, fear of bad publicity, companies emphasis on economic performance, sensitive and confidential information, absence of pressure by government states, and absence of NGOs appear to be impeding CED practices. Participants believed companies should be accountable to all stakeholder groups for their environmental impacts and the only way for enforcing CED practice is using mandatory compliance. The results present evidence of a widespread demand for mandated CED in a separate stand-alone report. The results also showed that, information related to environmental activities have been given the highest priority by all the stakeholders while, the issues related to environmental financial issues and energy issues have been placed last and second last on the ranking scale. The results imply that regulators and policy makers as well companies as have to consider the policy implications of these other stakeholders' views and requirements. In addition, the findings require careful consideration by regulators and policy makers at the national and international levels. Drawing on the empirical results, the study makes some recommendations for future research aimed at improving CED practice in Libya and more broadly. This is the first time this type of research has been conducted in Libya.
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