Stakeholder View Model
The report is prepared to identify different categories of stakeholder or group of stakeholder by the application of stakeholder view model. Organization that has been chosen for the purpose of analysis is Snap Inc that is a technology company of United States. Stakeholders have been identified by preparing a diagram with Snap Inc as the central organization. Analysis of motives and behavior of the identified specific stakeholders have been demonstrated in the report. Providing stakeholders with the targeted communication is the intention behind the stakeholder categorization and this call for segmenting stakeholders into shared interest by meaningful groups.
This particular describes the stakeholder view model for outlining the specific stakeholder within each group of stakeholder of Snap Inc. The model is used to prepare a diagram representing the different stakeholder groups with Snap Inc being the central organization. Snap Inc is an American camera and technology company that was incorporated in the month of May in year 2012. Snapchat is the flagship product of Snap Inc that offers communication platform to people by sharing images and videos (Investor.snap.com 2018). Stakeholder view is a model that helps in articulating the importance of stakeholder approach to the business and society as a whole. It put forward the view that managers of organization are not only required to answer the shareholders. Other than shareholders, they are also required to account for any other individual or group of individual who are impacted by the objectives of firm. The model of stakeholders will help in identifying different groups of stakeholders who is either directly or indirectly affected by the operations and achievement of objectives of firms (Bryson 2018). Furthermore, model intends to justify the analysis and identification of several stakeholders by way of stakeholder mapping and stakeholder analysis.
Stakeholders are generally categorized into primary or the users, providers, influencers and other key stakeholders involve governance. Primary stakeholders are those who have the major impact on organization by their activities and they are mostly and directed affected (Golini et al. 2015). They are the people who would be using the products launched by company and they are regarded as output beneficiaries. Such stakeholders are internal department or customers. Providers are the stakeholders who impact the organization in an indirect way and they are indirectly affected and they provide resources to business. Providers include contractors, business partners and catering staff. Other stakeholders are the key stakeholders who have influence on decision makers as they possess the ability to change the direction of any programme or project. Stakeholders falling in the category of governance are the people interested in knowing how things are managed (Crilly et al. 2016). Such stakeholders are auditors, health and safety and regulators.
Identifying Stakeholder Categories of Snap Inc
Customers- Customers are provided with an extended ability under contractual arrangement by evaluating their ability to make payments. Generally, collateral is not obtained and required by them. Snap Inc intends to make a persuasive arrangement with the customers for recognizing the revenue from advertised products. For returning products, customers are offered with limited rights along with making judgments about customer creditworthiness. For varying scope of customers, they are provided with indemnifications in the ordinary course of business.
Suppliers- Suppliers fall into the stakeholder category that is external to organization. They have become the most critical stakeholders in recent times with the expansion of business. Business is able to develop vision, shared goals and strategies by building loyal relationships with suppliers and their acquaintances. In order to provide the functionalities for using the products and carrying out operations, Snap Inc relies on component of third party suppliers. Snap Inc has the obligation to indemnifying the suppliers as per the information retrieved from the annual report. In addition to this, organization enjoys complete discretion in selection of suppliers and selecting on the place to advertise. The functionalities required by the business to use their products, Snap Inc rely on component of third party supplier (Herrera 2015). Business of Snap Inc can be harmed seriously due to the failure of effective management of suppliers.
Employees- Many new employees have been hired by Snap Inc in light of its rapid international expansion that has impeded its ability to monitor the employee’s performance. The business strategy of organization incorporates adding of specialized employees by way of acquisition. Employees are required to comply with the adopted code of conduct (Betts et al. 2015). A culture of hard work is fostered by creating a competitive compensation packages. Such culture allows organization to have direct meaningful contributions to exciting and new projects. For the year ending 31st December, 2017, total number of employees is recorded at 3069.
Investors- Snap Inc presents financial and non GAAP measures to enhance the investors overall understanding of their financial performance. In addition to this, investors are provided with the information on free cash flow that helps in determining the liquidity position of company. It is very crucial on part of organization to maintain good relationship with the company as a vital role is played by them in determining growth and success of company (Wheelen et al. 2016). The financial information and material business of organization is adequately announced by Snap Inc using the website of investor relation such as press releases, webcasts, SEC filings and conference calls.
Stakeholder Categories and Generic Strategic Programs
The stakeholder categories to which the different stakeholders identified in above section belong are users, providers, influencers and governance. Generic stakeholder strategy is considered as an offensive strategy that is adopted by organization in marketing area to support the stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, customers and employees. Each four different categories of stakeholders are managed by development of different generic strategic programs.
Stakeholder category and associated generic strategic programs:
Category 1: Supportive stakeholders
An ideal stakeholder is one who supports the actions and goals of organization. Cooperation with such stakeholders has high potential with lower potential threat. Generally, it is required by stakeholders such as managers, trustees, parent company and employees to support the organization for managing it well. Nonprofit community, service providers and suppliers are other supportive stakeholders.
Strategy 1: Involvement of supportive stakeholders
The cooperative potential between the supportive stakeholders and organization can be maximally encouraged by executives by involving them. Usually, this category of stakeholders are often ignored to be managed and organization often overlook their cooperative potential and therefore, this particular strategy is greatly emphasized. Implementation of techniques of participative management, increasing decision making in the participation and decentralization of authority to middle managers should be done for involving supportive stakeholders (Alkhuraiji et al. 2016). Therefore, it is of utmost important for business to involve such supportive stakeholders by involving them into decision making process and decentralization of authority.
Category 2: Governance stakeholders
Such stakeholders are low on potential cooperation and high on potential threat and they are regarded as most distressing. Some of the governance or non supportive stakeholders include regulators, government, and employee union. Strategic management of organization is broadened by incorporating strategy of managing stakeholders (Vishnevskiy et al. 2016).
Strategy 2: Strategy of defending
Such strategy helps in lowering the dependence forming the basis of interest of stakeholders in organization in terms of framework of Kotler on external dependence (Meijer 2015). Such strategic management is done by involving several strategic notions and traditional marketing. Such defense can be considered as initiative strategy that would help organization to limit their potential threat.
Category 3: Influencing stakeholders
This particular category of stakeholder plays a major role in an organization and they are regarded as mixed blessings. In such stakeholder category, the potential to cooperate and threaten is high. Generally, stakeholder with mixed blessings includes organization with complementary products and services, clients and employees who are in short supply (Cornelissen and Werner 2014). Such stakeholders can either become more or less supportive.
Conclusion
Strategy 3: Collaboration with influencing stakeholders
Being high on dimension of potential threat and cooperation, it would be suitable to implement the strategy of managing such stakeholders by way of collaboration. If the cooperation of such stakeholders is maximized by business executive, it would be more difficult for threatening stakeholders to oppose the organization (Orlikowski et al. 2016). In such scenario, a variety of collaborative efforts such as joint venture and mergers or acquisition are possible.
Category 4: Provider stakeholders
Such stakeholders are neither especially cooperative nor highly threatening and they provide organization with required resources. Stakeholder of this kind for medium and large organization includes professional association, suppliers, stockholder and other consumer interest groups. However, they have the potential to increase the threat or cooperation.
Strategy 4: Monitoring the stakeholders providing resources
The stakeholders whose potential for cooperating and threat is low can be managed by implementing the techniques of monitoring them. It is possible for business executives to minimize the expenditure of resources of organization by recognizing the fact that the interests of stakeholders are issue specific and narrow (Hueske et al. 2015). The organization should act to deflect their opposition and increase their support only if the concerned issues are likely to be significant.
It is required by organization to go beyond the traditional techniques of strategy management and evaluate the environment for different categories of stakeholders influencing decision of organization (Oehmen et al. 2014).
Some of the strategic programs that can be recommended to Snap Inc for enhancing its relationship with stakeholders are listed below:
Transformation of typical stakeholder relationship- The relationship of organization with influencer stakeholders such as business partners and regulators should be enhanced by formulation of appropriate strategies. Strategic program that can be used to manage such stakeholder would be by using “new classification” (Cornelissen and Werner 2014). Such strategy can incorporate methods such as stock bonuses to agent and building public relation.
Development of clear strategy supporting operations- The loyalty and satisfaction of users group of stakeholder can be improved by driving operational efficiency. It can be done by aligning the organizational objectives with the business plan. Defensive strategies require organization to maintain existing programs, changing the current existing organizational beliefs and the process of transaction being driven by that particular group of stakeholders.
Prioritizing demand of provider stakeholders- Since these stakeholder provides resources to organization when required, it becomes of utmost importance to prioritize their demands on several facets (Herrera 2015). However, stakeholders who demand do not enjoy legitimacy or power and have only urgency.
Creating differentiation attributes in value chain for suppliers- Incorporating the differentiation attributes in the value chain of Snap Inc would help in spill over for impacting the quality and performance of end product of company. There should be strict specifications on the resources that are sought from suppliers which would give the company high rating on their product (Burlton 2015). In addition to this, there would also be improved product features and product designs and thereby expanding the use of applications. For this purpose, it is required by managers of organization to understand the activities and differentiation source that drive uniqueness for evaluation of several approaches of differentiation.
Conclusion:
From the analysis of stakeholders of Snap Inc, it has been ascertained that organization various different and specific group of stakeholders that would fall under different categories. Such categories include influencer, users, providers and governance stakeholders. Furthermore, different generic strategies have been recommended for different groups of stakeholders because each of them has contribution to organization in different way. Creation of different attributed for suppliers will helps in increasing efficiency when seeking resources. It is essential for Snap Inc to transform their relationship with influencer stakeholders that would contribute to success and growth of company. Organization should also take steps and formulate appropriate strategies for providing their service at the lowest cost along with continue to grow the business in markets around the world.
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