Stakeholders and How They Impact Your Business enterprise

Blame it on information technology, communication technology etc., the significance of knowledge, talent and skills in employees is fast diminishing.

The world was used to a particular way of recruiting, developing and retaining employees in business organisations. Socially, individuals had to have knowledge, talent and skills to be "successful" in life. In business organisations, while on one hand it was the business activities shaped up by defined or undefined objectives, on the other hand was the organisational system which facilitated such business activities. This way, the fact always remained that business organisations had two components - the business and the organisation, which mostly related to people. Till then the pattern of acquiring, developing and maintaining knowledge, talent and skills in the form of people were in place. The result is the continuous process of "talent acquisition" (the modern name for recruitment) rather than talent development within the organisation. In many organisations in these areas of business, talent acquisition has broken away from HR function, often assuming a much larger size and significance than the original HR function itself. This predicament has arisen more due to the proven business alignment of talent acquisition as a function, contrasting from the rather clerical and clinical nature of the conventional HR function.

Skills are useless if the work environment is not conducive. What probably will remain in a business organisation will be the business operations (BOs) involving the nitty-gritty of the business and business administration (BAs) which involves the way BOs are facilitated by its people.

The Diminishing Significance of Knowledge, Talent and Skills in Business Organisations

STAKEHOLDERS AND HOW THEY AFFECT YOUR BUSINESS

Stakeholders can be defined as ‘individuals and groups who are affected by the activities of an organisation.

;Internal stakeholders include managers and employees and are those that are situated within the company and affect the ‘day-to-day' running of the organisation.; Connected stakeholders cover groups such as shareholders, suppliers and customers, and are parties which invest or have dealings with the firm. External stakeholders include the Government, neighbours, pressure groups, local councils and the surrounding community.

As well as stakeholders, organisations and the people involved with them are expected to adhere to written and unwritten ethical boundaries.

Stakeholders are found in all organisations, businesses or firms – from a local

The number of stakeholders per business will vary as will their importance and influence. The type of organisation or product / service it supplies will also determine its stakeholders. A Public Limited Corporation may have far more stakeholders than a family owned business due to its vast numbers of shareholders. In an ideal world a fine balance could be achieved to satisfy all stakeholders whilst obtaining the organisations goals in profit and sales (often profit maximisation and / or sales maximisation). However certain stakeholders may have completely conflicting measurements of success, resulting in one stakeholder being rewarded having a detrimental effect on another stakeholder.

Perhaps the main form of stakeholder approach / management is the "Stakeholder Corporation" concept. It is their view that organisations must be proactive in their approach to relationships with potential stakeholders in order for the stakeholder to want a relationship back. It may be viable to maintain a strong ‘Action' relationship if the company has few stakeholders, but to keep hundreds of stakeholders happy must be at the expense of others.

Another approach to stakeholder management, described by Freeman, is to analyse to what extent an organisation has developed its Stakeholder Management Capability (SMC). Similar to the above fore-mentioned approach, SMC provides three levels in which an organisation can address its stakeholders – Level 1: The Rational Level, Level 2: The Process Level and Level 3: The Transactional Level. At the level 1 stage a company simply identifies its stakeholders and what their stakes maybe. Level 2 organisations have actually developed and applied processes or procedures to collate data and information on their stakeholders. Level 3 organisations are in a position were their managers interact with stakeholders and form relationships.

In the case of organisations and in particular multi-national firms, it is increasingly the case that stakeholders are aware of what that company does in other countries in which it operates.

Ethical issues between employees and management can have serious effects on a company.

the company has to certain stakeholder groups. The car manufacture Daimler-Chrysler has recently implemented an ‘employment pact', thus demonstrating the importance the company places in ethical responsibility to its employees.