discussion

5 hours ago

Manoj Kumar Chintalapudi 

Week 10

COLLAPSE

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Stakeholder engagement it’s one of the business world‘s most popular buzzwords. What does it really mean does it mean engaging in the war no it’s not that. Does it mean engaging in food processing or having engagement proposal with someone not that either. Now, let’s back up a bit, so, your company makes widgets and business is booming. Naturally, people start to notice you, one day you drive to work to find protesters at the company gates claiming that your widgets are toxic and it is bad for the planet. Soon, more stakeholders hear about the protest and decide to join the campaign, suddenly you’re in the news for all the wrong reasons. So, what do you do, if we are the bad guy, so maybe we call the authorities, arrest activist and explaining our story (Lavallee,  Wicks,  Alfonso Cristancho  & Mullins, 2014). The many great things your company does and how ridiculous those crazy hippies are,  problem solved right? No it is  not so fast.

In the end it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong, the cycle of demonization and finger-pointing rarely leads to solutions and almost always to gridlock in a tarnished brand. To overcome the cycle we to advocate for stakeholder engagement. Technically, it’s the systematic and proactive integration of feedback from those impacted by your organizations operations. In practice it’s all about humanization, when we had knowledge or shared humanity and amid that none of us is perfect we can begin removing our masks and working together to find common ground. Stakeholder engagement means building trust even between those with very different views from right to left corporate to NGO. It means knocking on doors before problems arise rather than after, it means listening more than talking, it means communicating with humility rather than posting (Greenwood, 2007).  It means engaging over and over again to continue raising the bar in a way that’s better for your stakeholders your planet and your bottom line. Now it doesn’t always have to be formal, after all most friendships are built in the board room and having a little fun never heard either. When we stop building house and start building bridges we create a space for solutions that are systemic innovative and lasting. So, the next time you find protesters at your gate consider this maybe you shouldn’t have a gate in the first place. An organization specializing in stakeholder engagement, we should align the power of the private sector with the purpose of its most critical stakeholders to address eminent environmental and social issues (Jacsó, 2005).

Greenwood, M. (2007). Stakeholder engagement: Beyond the myth of corporate responsibility. Journal of Business ethics, 74(4), 315-327.

Jacsó, P. (2005). Google Scholar: the pros and the cons. Online information review, 29(2), 208-214.

Lavallee, D. C., Wicks, P., Alfonso Cristancho, R., & Mullins, C. D. (2014). Stakeholder engagement in patient-centered outcomes research: high-touch or high-tech?. Expert review of pharmacoeconomics & outcomes research, 14(3), 335-344.

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