StakeholderView.com

There has been a lot of publicity recently about the stakeholder uproar of several energy companies.
Here are just two recent news stories:
Exxon revolt gathers pace
Shell is selling suicide by preferring tar sands to wind
And these are just the most recent I came across.

But what is the reason?
Well here is my take. High Energy prices, increasing profits of these companies and certain arrogance is not really helping to boost the stakeholder confidence in these companies.

Is there any thing they can do?
Well, yes of course. With the willingness every company can change the way it is being seen by its stakeholders.
These are the four changes I would make if I would be at the helm of one of the big energy companies:
I would first of all push a lot of money into (1) increasing importance of renewable technologies, (2) become more socially active in the various local communities, (3) exchange my communications staff and get new ones and as a consequence have so called (4) Corporate Responsibility Change Agents replace 50% of the current communications staff.

What are Responsibility Change Agents?
These are people that have worked for other companies as experts on how to make a business more sustainable, have it communicate in a more honest way and plan, lead and implement projects within the business to create change.

In that way a company can make sure that the interests of stakeholders increasingly taken into account and that a wider audience then just the shareholders are being treated with the respect and importance they demand.

That is my take, but what do you think?

Regards,
Fabian

Stakeholder engagement is very hard to define because it all depends on the openness and responsiveness of the organisation. There isn’t even a definition of stakeholder engagement on Wikipedia.
The closest you will get to a definition on Wikipedia will be on the topic of brand management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_engagement)

And this is really the problem with organisations at the moment. Stakeholder engagement does not really exist as a main stream term but rather Brand management.
For me these two terms are not totally different but build upon each other. Every organisation needs to manage their brand(s) but also needs to engage with stakeholder on a different level then the brand level.
This is where stakeholder engagement comes in. Stakeholder engagement is to put it simple the evolution of the brand management. Stakeholder engagement not only pushes out the communication message but most importantly listens and provides feedback from a broader range of stakeholders then brand management can ever do.

So what should organisations do to “upgrade” from brand management to stakeholder engagement?
Well that is up them and their organisational capabilities as well as willingness to open up and let stakeholders take charge of certain discussion topics regarded the organisation.
But there are some vital rules of engagement to make sure that the fundamentals of proper stakeholder engagement are being build the right way from moment one.

This is what I will write about in the next few posts. So stay tuned.

Fabian