Businesses and corporations are a great network that involves people, many other businesses and organizations, banks, and financial investors. It is a mutually beneficial system between stakeholders and the company where people invest their resources for the present and future stability of that business. Stakeholders are one of the key elements in the corporate structure and as such, the division of roles and duties is crucial in guaranteeing the success of a company.
IBM Company is a worldwide corporation, which bases its matters on technology and computers. It is more than 100 years old and it started as a statistical company. It used the help of the technology to do a population count, commonly called a census. Herman Hollerith was the one who started the company in 1889 (Pugh, 1995). As with many other companies’ stakeholders of IBM play an important role in the corporation. There are those stakeholders who are directly related to the matters of the company. These are called primary stakeholders. The role of such people is to deal with the resources of the immediately available company. As it is of primary importance to the company, primary stakeholders are internal financial “supporters” of the business of the corporation. They deal with customers, employees, banks and are directly responsible for the well-being of the company. They are the ones who decide where to invest the money, which products or services to buy or sell, and any other economic manipulations of the financial resources of the company. The secondary stakeholders are people how are not involved directly in the market. These can be in form of the general public or individuals, other businesses, activist groups or many others. Secondary stakeholders do not have a crucial influence on the company since they are more distanced from the immediate actions. Sometimes secondary stakeholders can become primary (Sharma, 2004). In the IBM Company, it is really important that the right strategy was chosen in the strategic planning. This will define the future of the company and so people who are most enthusiastic, motivated and practical should be selected. It would be the primary stakeholders’ duty to implement the planning process. These people have to know how to prioritize and select the route, which will be most profitable and beneficial for the company. The first step would be to focus on the goal and examine both internal and external factors that might influence these goals. Then a strategy best suited has to be selected and presented to other workers or management. And then the structured proposition for the implementation plan is selected. The people involved in the planning have to be knowledgeable of the company and its inner processes. Also, they have to be interested in the success of the company since they directly depend on it (Friedman, 2006). Compared to secondary stakeholders, who are distant and are not so involved with the company, primary stakeholders can pinpoint the problem or an issue and deal with it. They are the ones who know the intricate politics and inside fluctuations of the market and its connection to the company’s matters. Another important point is that it has to be a competitive strategic plan, which will force the other companies either to back off or to spend more resources and time in finding ways to deal with the competition.
It is clear that the role of stakeholders is based on the information they have about the company and they’re personal want to gain. They have to know all ins and outs of the business and be able to predict what results in their actions will create.
References
Friedman, A. (2006) Stakeholders: Theory and practice. New York, United States: Oxford University Press.
Pugh, E. (1995). Building IBM: Shaping an industry and its technology. Massachusetts, United States: MIT Press.
Sharma, S. (2004) Stakeholders, the environment and society. New York, United States: Edward Elgar Publishing.