In this paper, we examine the impact of stakeholder governance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) around the world to determine whether CSR is employed as a mechanism to mitigate conflicts of interest between managers and diverse stakeholders, or used as managerial perquisites. To examine this relation properly, we not only employ a large and extensive sample of international firms, but also control for endogeneity by using dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM), propensity score matching, and difference-in-difference approach. Our results suggest that stakeholder governance positively influences firms’ CSR engagement with a greater magnitude than board governance after controlling for endogeneity and other confounding factors of traditional corporate governance mechanisms, firm characteristics and national factors. Stakeholders’ influence in CSR engagement is more prevalent when investor protections and board governance are relatively weak.