What Are Stakeholders - Essay Example

The manager of the institution is commonly located in the center of the constitutional relation between a business institution and its stakeholders. The word Stakeholders have two kinds of definitions one is inclusive while the other is exclusive definition. The inclusive definition includes any group or person who can be affected by the organization’s acts or who can affect the acts of an organization and now has expanded including non-humans too.
The exclusive definition includes stakeholders that are focused on from the manager’s point of view such as the power of the stakeholder, the dependence of the institution on that stakeholder, or even the risk from that particular stakeholder.
Organizations that focus on the maximization of their wealth try to reduce and limit the number of stakeholders and try to aim at financial measures. According to some writers, “stakeholders are recognized by the real or possible harms and gains that they will undergo or expect to undergo as a result of an organization’s activity or inactivity.” But such definitions are criticized due to the lack of specification and due to the challenges in recognizing the various stakeholders. Sometimes stakeholders are referred to as those people, who have the power to affect the institution, who have the right to a relationship with the institution, or who have the importance to claim (Driscoll and Starik, 57).
In the present day, nature is also being included as one or more stakeholder(s) because of its importance not only to human life but also to the objectives, aims, and intentions of a business or a firm. As we previously studied that a stakeholder is an entity that gets affected by the acts or actions of an institution or has an effect on the acts or actions of an institution. Thus, nature has a lot of effects on the acts and actions of a firm and also gets affected to a very big extent by the acts and actions of a firm. Hence, nature and everything that comes with it holds the position of one or more stakeholder(s). But the fact that nature gets represented by social and ethical groups and by the various communities thus it many times does not gain the status of a stakeholder whereas it has all the aspects of a stakeholder and even stands firm on the stakeholder criterion (Philips and Reichart, 188).
The fact that nature and everything that comes with it is regarded as a stakeholder hence the cows from which beef is produced can also be considered as a stakeholder. As if disease hits the cows then beef production from them will stop and all the cows that will be present in the stock of the company will be wasted hence affecting the company. They can be considered as a stakeholder but considering them a stakeholder will make the definition of stakeholder increase to a very big extent hence resulting in the lack of specification of every particular stakeholder. So, it is better not to consider cows from whom beef is produced and it is better to consider cows under the name of nature only.

This article also suggests that stakeholders should not only be attributed to their power, legitimacy, and urgency but also to their presence. Read More