This study analyses how firms act with regard to social responsibility from the perspective of Stakeholder Theory. The objective is to empirically analyse the importance of communication with stakeholders for social responsibility. This involves the establishment of a structural equation model that enables analysis of the empirical relationship between firms' degree of communication with stakeholders and the effectiveness of their corporate social responsibility, measured by corporate social performance (CSP). We adopt a Bayesian approach that enables exact inferences concerning the model's parameters and handles missing data by random imputations, thus increasing the study's reliability. The results obtained from a sample of 416 Spanish organisations show the importance of interacting and establishing channels of communication with different stakeholders in order to identify their specific demands and expectations. Indeed, communication with stakeholders helps firms to improve their CSP programmes and activities. We can thus conclude that failure to establish good communication channels could have a negative effect on social responsibility. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment