Stakeholder Map - Essay Example

Running Head: Stakeholder Map Stakeholder Map [Institute’s Stakeholder Map Quite understandably, almost all business spend a lot of their studying about stakeholder management. In fact, for the past few decades the rapid pace of globalization and competition has made it difficult to avoid any of the stakeholders and has called for effective management of stakeholders by understanding them, their expectations, their motivations, communication needs, interest level, power position and many other factors (Freeman, Harrison & Wicks, pp. 6-13, 2007). A very important development in this regard is the stakeholder map, which helps to understand the same. Stakeholder map considers stakeholders in the two very important dimensions of power and interest in the company or project. Many authors divide power and interest into three categories of high, medium, and low, thus, making nine different categories. They are “high power - high interest, high power - medium interest, high power – low interest, medium power-high interest, medium power – medium interest, medium power – low interest, low power - high interest, low power – medium interest and low power – low interest stakeholders” (Freeman, Harrison & Wicks, pp. 6-13, 2007). However, in this paper, we will only consider the two extremes of high and low, thus we would only be left with four distinct categories of high power – high interest stakeholders, high power – low interest stakeholders, low power – high interest stakeholders and low power – low interest stakeholders (Bourne, pp. 56-59, 2009). The rest of this paper is an attempt to look at each of these four categories and analyze various dimensions of these groups of stakeholders. High power and high interest stakeholders are the key players in any of the organizations and they usually play a vital role in the overall structure, step-up and decision making process. Quite understandably, these people are very close to the organization and any company just cannot afford to avoid their satisfaction, motivation and their needs. In fact, even if a company for any reason fails to engage them and meet their needs, in the first place, the stakeholders would not allow that to happen because of their high interest level. However, even if the company is successful in isolating themselves from these stakeholders for any reasons, the stakeholders would make the company pay for it with using their high degree of power that they possess. This explains why any company or manager just cannot afford to maintain distance or avoid these stakeholders. On the other side of the picture, if these stakeholders feel that the company has to maintain a proactive approach for dealing with these stakeholders (Chinyio & Olomolaiye, pp. 12-16, 2010). Furthermore, a great of planning and homework is required to address the needs and concerns of these stakeholders. Their satisfaction would mean smooth and efficient running of the organization; however, on the other side, their dissatisfaction would result in many obstacles since they hold significant power. As mentioned above that the company has no choice but to meet all of their information requirements; however, the medium of communication would vary greatly and would have to be altered according to the situation and the need of specific stakeholders. Some of these stakeholders would prefer getting the information with the help of printed materials like magazines, newsletters, reports, memos, and others (Freeman, Harrison & Wicks, pp. 6-13, 2007). However, in some more crucial conditions they make ask for face-to-face communication by meetings, interviews, and conferences. In addition, many of these stakeholders would prefer video conferencing, bogs, internet forums, emails, or others. However, it is preferred that these people should be communicated with more dynamic and detailed ways. Face to face, meetings, conferences, and detailed reports are the best ways to communicate with them. Moreover, communication with this group of stakeholders should be recurring, constant and with proper feedback (Johnson & Scholes, pp. 52-58, 2008). Since due to their high level of interest the key to keep them motivated remains in making them feel their degree of power, importance, and influence and by keeping them informed all the time. The second group of stakeholders is those having a high degree of power but low level of interest in the operations of the company or project. Managing these people can be very tricky for managers and companies. Like the former group of stakeholders, their satisfaction means a lot for the company because of their high degree of influence and power. However, these usually busy businesspeople and executives do not show a lot of interest due to many reasons. One potential reason could be their busy schedule and various commitments and this is acceptable. However, someone may not be interested in the company’s activities because of dissatisfaction or in other words, someone may have moved from the first group to the second group because of the company’s inability to meet their needs and expectations (McCourt & Eldridge, pp. 102-104, 2003). If this were the case then the managers would have to work their best to put those stakeholders back to their original groups. Unlike the high interest and high power stakeholders, constant communication, bombardment of a lot of information and time-consuming participation may bore these people due to their low interest (Cook, pp. 39-40, 2004). However, on the other hand, a company cannot neglect them as well as mentioned above. Therefore, it becomes the responsibility of the company and managers to deal with this complexity. Very often, companies deal with problem by providing only the most important, concise, summarize, and crisp information to these people with minimum time consumption (Chinyio & Olomolaiye, pp. 12-16, 2010). Inviting these people to all the meetings would not be the best option however; mailing them the summaries of reports, minutes of the previous meetings and short emails is always a good option. Now we jump to those two groups of stakeholders who posses low degree of power with varying level of interest in the project or the company. Firstly, there are stakeholders with low power but high degree of interest. The managers and company is responsible for keeping them informed and involved throughout. However, there low power and control over the company means that quite understandably, that you will not have you put in a lot of effort for keeping them as in the case of high power and high interest people. It is also important to note that despite the fact that the company is not obliged to undertake many efforts to involve them, these people are indeed great assets for the company. Their high interest level means that are always willing to contribute with their ideas, creativity, plans, time, energy and efforts for the betterment of the project or the company (McCourt & Eldridge, pp. 102-104, 2003). More importantly, you will not be forced to accept or consider all of them seriously because of their low degree of power. However, at the end of day, these people with provide you many alternative plans and ideas that would be helpful. Lastly, there are people with low degree of power and low level of interest in the company. In other words, these people are not bothered with what the company is doing and at the same time, the company is not bothered about them either. However, since they are stakeholders this becomes the responsibility of the company to monitor them and try to move them towards the low power but high interest people so that they can be valuable for their company (Johnson & Scholes, pp. 52-58, 2008). References Bourne, Lynda. (2009). Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organizational Implementation. Gower Publishing, Ltd. Chinyio, Ezekiel, & Olomolaiye, Paul. (2010). Construction Stakeholder Management. John Wiley and Sons. Cook, Sarah. (2004). Measuring customer service effectiveness. Gower Publishing, Ltd. Freeman, R. Edward., Harrison, Jeffrey S., & Wicks, Andrew C. (2007). Managing for stakeholders: survival, reputation, and success. Yale University Press. Johnson, Gerry, & Scholes, Kevan. (2008). Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text & Cases. Pearson Education India. McCourt, Willy, & Eldridge, Derek. (2003). Global human resource management: managing people in developing and transitional countries. 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