Discussion
The current study is concentrated on identifying the different groups of stakeholders of Snap Inc of which the Snap chat is the flagship product. Different stakeholders groups have been identified by categorization using the stakeholder view model. The reasons why the stakeholders are considered as crucial to the organization have been briefly explained along with the extended research on the stakeholder model and company. Snap Inc is a technology company based in Los Angeles, United States and was incorporated in the month of May in year 2012. Company offered products such as friend page, cameras, snap map, Spectacles and memories. Snap Chat is the application of camera that assists people in communicating through images and videos intended to improve the way of communicating and living (Investor.snap.com 2018). Such applications of Snap Inc contributes to the progress of human by empowering people to live, express, having fun together and learning about the world. The stakeholder view models presents different stakeholder of Snap Inc using a diagram that clearly depicts the stakeholder identification.
The model of stakeholder theory is the concept for describing the stakeholders of corporation and their strategic identification. The theory is considered as a principle ensuring that organization are accountable to different categories of stakeholders and helps in balancing the stakeholder divergent interests. Stakeholder’s model has been prepared for assessing large number of shareholders in managing the organization that is regarded as difficult and complex task. Each stakeholders group in the organization can be categorized into players, subject, context setters and crowd (Durand et al. 2017). All such stakeholders impacts organization directly or indirectly and are internal and external to organization.
Players are the key stakeholders who need to be managed and engaged on regular basis. It is essential for organization to consult them about the elements and step of implementation strategy as the power to stop or support the initiative has also been mentioned by them. Such stakeholders might act as critical actor for deciding on the success of initiative and thereby they should be involved in decision making process. They are also the beneficiaries of the product produced by company. Such stakeholders basically comprise of customers and internal department of organization. Subjects or providers are the ambassador or supporter of any initiative who should be kept informed and involved. They do not have any such actual power but has the capability of influencing others and they are the source of procuring resources by organization. Stakeholders falling under this category include vendor, temporary contractors or suppliers (Helmig et al. 2015).
Analysis of Stakeholders of Snapchat/Snap Inc Using Stakeholder View Model
Crowds are the stakeholder group which can be considered as influencer and they are the group having interest in any particular project. However, in case of any alterations in the power or interest, they should be monitored. They have the capacity to influence the decision of organization by changing the project future direction. Business partner is one such stakeholder falling into this category (Garcia and Aguilera 2015).
Governance or context setters are stakeholders who have the inclination towards gaining knowledge about knowhow of the business or any concerned project. They are required to be informed and satisfied. Regulators, government and auditors fall into this particular stakeholder category.
Stakeholder group of Snap Inc:
(Source: created by author)
The behavior and motives of different groups of stakeholders falling into different stakeholder category have been presented in this section. Some of the important stakeholders of organization are employees, customers, shareholders, shareholders, suppliers, business partners. It is revealed by conducting the analysis of importance of stakeholders to corporate organization that maintaining relationship with stakeholders are important for ensuring resources that helps in maintaining profitability of business. With respect to maintaining stakeholder relationship, organization is capable of securing high corporate reputation and good organizational performance (Lloret 2016).
Stakeholders such as government, board of directors and trade associations intends to establish certain principles and norms and thereby securing functioning of the organization. Other stakeholders such as employees, distributors, innovators, suppliers and service providers help in facilitating daily operations of organization. Community members, journalists and media are the stakeholders who have interest during organization’s crisis period. Therefore, it can be inferred that the stakeholders serve as the crucial decisive factor determining performance of organization. They are responsible for controlling organization’s stability along with forming corporate reputation directly through boycotting, resource restriction and income (Thijssens et al. 2015).
Vendors- Vendors fall into the category of supportive or subject stakeholder having low potential on threat and high potential on cooperation. They are the stakeholder categories who interested in business outcome but do not form a part of it. The functionalities of providing resources and performing operations are done by vendors on which organization is heavily reliable. Business of Snap Inc could be harmed seriously if there are any defects and errors in the third party technology. Reputational damage to organization is dependent upon the types of services provided by vendors. Snap Inc enjoys a complete discretion in selecting their vendors (Purvis et al. 2015.
Identifying Stakeholders of SnapChat
Customers- Customers falls into the category of players or users and they are external to organizations. Training program is provided to customers by considering their feedback and an adequate judgment is made when determining the customer creditworthiness. A persuasive arrangement is made by Snap Inc for recognizing the revenue generated from customers (Elsawah et al. 2015). The ability of customers to make the payment is evaluated for extending the credit granted to customers. Therefore, customers are one of the stakeholders who have stake in the outcome of business of Snap Inc.
Regulators- The results of operations and financial conditions of business of Snap Inc can be negatively impacted by violation of regulatory orders. In addition to this, the practices and policies of organization might be forced to change due to regulatory enquiry. Government regulators act as a catalyst in facilitating the resource generation. When doing business internationally, organization is subjected to risks related to regulatory and legal environment in foreign jurisdictions comprising of any unexpected change in regulatory enforcement and requirements. It has been found from analysis of annual report that the business could be seriously harmed by risks and any other regulatory environment (Sodhi 2015). For instance, the transaction of payment using Snapchat for sending cash might be subjected to regulatory requirement which might hamper the business.
Business partners- Such stakeholders have equally high potential on threat and cooperation. Such stakeholders are regarded as mixed blessing to the organizations that are managed well. The improvement in the product for partners is done by investing heavily and relentlessly. The growing needs of business require having infrastructure that is supported by partnering with providers such as Amazon and Google. The upfront cost pertaining to infrastructure is scaled quickly by such partnerships that help in innovation of products (Voinov et al. 2016). Snapchat lets user directly interact with their partners by reducing their activities.
It is required for organization to classify the generic stakeholder strategies for managing different stakeholder groups.
The cooperative potential of such stakeholder who supports the organization externally or internally should be maximized. These stakeholders should be involved in decision making and functioning of business. This would increase the willingness of buyers and help in attracting valued financial and human resource capital. It is evident that value is created in organization by actively building relationships with internal departments and customers (Barnett et al. 2015). In addition to this, several ranges of development and training program should be provided to develop close relationships and generating high level of satisfaction to customers.
Categorization of Stakeholders and Generic Strategic Program for Selected Stakeholders
Stakeholders influencing the positional advantages of organization other than resources should be defended by adopting appropriate strategy. Such strategy should be intended to create high cooperative potential and lower threat. Therefore, a defending strategy should be adopted by firm that would help in avoiding potential threat posed by such stakeholders. Such defensive strategies would help in maintenance of existing programs, reinforcing organizational current beliefs and driving the transaction process of stakeholders. It should be ensured by the existing programs that there is preserving of helpful stakeholders and neutralization of competitive threat (Payne and Calton 2017).
The existing programs of Snap Inc should be monitored, any changes against the transaction process should be guarded. Such strategies might involve resisting any alterations that have been proposed internally or externally. Implementation of monitoring strategy would help in minimization of costs and expenditure in procurement of resources.
Offensive stakeholders help in attaining in achieving organizational objectives alongside posing little threat further. Organization should adopt offensive strategy in areas of marketing for managing supportive stakeholders as well. It is so because such stakeholders would either defend or help in the activities of company and hence the strategy should be to lay in an effort to influence decision or to change the way of cooperation. There should be minimization of threat and maximizing stakeholder positive influence. Any opportunities available should be exploited for gain by the strategic program that helps in appropriate management of such stakeholders. Such offensive strategies should comprise of offensive programs that would involve change in current beliefs and objectives of stakeholders and adopting their position (Mason and Simmons 2014). This can be done by segmenting the markets that are different to organization.
Allocation of resources rationally- The operating part of budget should be separated from strategic part so that urgency and clarity is provided to new strategic programs. It would help in avoiding of overlooking of strategic programs and protecting the allocation of current resources. Allocation of resources of new strategic programs can be done by restructuring of organization, creation of new business units and sourcing of new people (Andriof et al. 2017).
Creating shareholders interaction- Implementation of strategic programs effectively should be done by carefully assessing the interactions with stakeholders. Such process involves using different approaches such as public relations, ignoring stakeholder, explicit negotiation and implicit negotiation. Stakeholders should be ignored when organizations fail to interact who impacts or are affected by organization. Negotiation takes into account the concerns of stakeholders in mitigation of objections by any potential group and strategic program formulation (Li et al. 2015).
Prioritized hierarchies- Ranking of stakeholder groups should be done in terms of relative importance to the strategic objectives of organization. Each group of stakeholder should be allocated with resources in terms of their equal importance so that there is no inherent biased of system towards current allocations (Tarhini et al. 2015).
Conclusion:
The report is prepared for indentifying different groups of stakeholders of Snap Inc using stakeholder view model. It has been ascertained that stakeholders forms an important part in decision making and building reputation and maintain performance of organization. It is essential on part of organization to have an understanding of the issues, their importance associated with each group of stakeholders and their willingness to expend resources. While evaluating the current situation and environment in which Snap Inc is operating, it can be said that the main threats would come from context setters or governance group of stakeholders. Therefore, the defensive programs should be properly implemented by organization and there should be transformation in the prevailing relationships with the supportive stakeholders. Hence, it can be inferred from the above analysis concerning shareholders that such classification contributes to proper and required formulation of strategies that is imperative for success and development of organization.
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