Customers as stakeholders – Customers however can go by different names and have different interests, other examples of a customers whoa re stakeholders include
- Patients at a local hospital, health centre or dental practice
- Fans of a local football team
- Visitors and tourists in a holiday resort
- Members of a group or association from the venture scouts to the local library.
Unless a customer knows the owner personally pr the business is very small. It is the collective views of the customers which influence business activities.
Issues which usually concern customers include:
- The opening hours and the availability of staff
- The range of goods or services offered, the price of these and the quality and the range additional facilities and services such as free home delivery
- The attitude of staff.
Employees as stakeholders – As an employee your interest in a business will be different from that of the customers. You are most likely to be concerned about the...
- The way staffs are treated example you will want to be treated fairly and t do interesting work. You will also want to work in a safe environment with an appropriate range of facilities.
- Rates of pay, how often pay rises are awarded. You will want t be paid fair rate relation to other people f you own age.
- If the business is doing well there are likely to be a promotion opportunity. Where there is a business which is performing poorly there would be threat of redundancy.
Owners and shareholders as stakeholders – Owners and shareholders have a common interest; they each invest money in the business. If it is successful they will make more money if it is not they will lose money. Shareholders hope to make money in two ways if the business does well then the value of their shares will increases. They could then sell their shares and take profit or keep them and hope they would increase further. The danger is that the shares could fall in value on which case the shareholders would lose money. Shareholders also expect the company to pay a dividend which is usually twp pence per share twice a year. Owners like to see their profit increasing and the value of their business like innocent smoothies rising.
Individual shareholder power to influence a company decision depends upon two things which are...
- How much money shareholder has invested. All shareholders have one vote for each share. Small investor may own only a few shares in a company, so their influence on the company is small. Large institutional shareholders such as a pension fund or insurance company may hold several hundred thousands shares, and they can use their votes to influence the way a company is run .
- The number of view from other shareholders. A private company may have only family members and few employees as shareholders. At a shareholder meeting all the views are likely to be heard and discussed. The voting may be more evenly balanced and all the shareholders may agree with a decision However if they don’t those with the most shares can still unvote the others.
The local community as a stakeholder – Local community has an interest in many of the business activities taking place in a n are for example residents of a large housing estate might welcome a supermarket opening on the edge of their estate but would be concerned about the number of lorries making late deliveries to the store. Local people may also be concerned about business activities and operations that could result in damage to the local environment such as the building of housing on green field sites. Some residents might worry that some business activities will reduce the value if their property.
Some issues that concern communities and which they might object to include...
- The building of ring roads and motorways which would damage the environment and might result in increase traffic in residential areas
- Air borne pollution from factories chemical sites and nuclear processing plants, and fears about long term health and safety.
- The building of prison or remand centres in semi residential areas because of the fears of escapes.
The government as a stakeholder – Government are also interested in business for political reason. All government want to retain power and aim to be re-elected. A government which is receiving large amounts in revenues has the scope to do more. It can spend money on new hospitals, schools and transport, which will please voters. It may even be able to lower taxes which may please them even more. But if the business is doing badly many people are unemployed and taxes are going up then the electorate may vote another party into power at the next general election in hope that it will do better.
Trade union – trade union represents the interest of the groups employees, they seek to secure higher wages and having a better condition for their member.
Employers associations – these are the employer’s equivalent of the trade union. These bodies represent the interest of Innocent smoothies groups of employers such as there employers association representing the interest of the employer’s specific industries.
Competitors - if the Innocent smoothies company get bankrupt this means that they will have more chance of taking customers away from their business.
Pressure groups as stakeholders – pressure groups an organised group of people which aim to influence more powerful bodies such as the government, local authorises or large businesses. Some of these groups are very large and operate internationally. There are thousands of pressure groups in Britain including…
- Trade union which lobby the government about the causes of workers.
- Most charities example shelter and the NSPCC
- Many famous environment groups’ example Greenpeace, friends of the earth and the world fund of nature.
Suppliers - Some suppliers dislike being dependent on business buyers they extend their operations to sell direct to the final consumer for example many breweries own their own pubs and restaurants and petrol companies have their own petrol stations. Equally some business buyers don’t like being dependent on suppliers. In this case they may decide to produce their own supplies for example Innocent smoothie’s product their own natural drink
