Identifying and Examining Key Stakeholders/Decision Makers

This chapter explains how executives, managers, employees, and consultants can identify key stakeholders and decision makers in an organization. Determining the key stakeholders in an organization is important to ensure that any type of change lasts. By utilizing the key concepts in this chapter, such as the tools, activities, key definitions, and theories, anyone can easily determine key stakeholders. Identifying the list of stakeholders should take careful thought and time should be set aside to gather ideas and sift through the list. To guide the creation of the list, stakeholder theory suggests that a "company should be run for the benefit of all those who may be deemed to have a stake in it and it identifies five categories of stakeholders: investors, employees, customers, suppliers, and the relevant community". Company managers who need to identify stakeholders should work on revisiting and clarifying the change effort or, in some circumstances, the company's purpose.