SPEEDY MOTORS COMPANY

Speedy Motors Company

Speedy Motors Company

Does the closing of a plant when it ceases to be profitable violate the "moral minimum"?

The closure of the Eastland plant does violate the "moral minimum" because of the hardship (harm) it causes to its employees and to the community. The affected stakeholders encompass all of the following: Eastland plant employees, business that hold contracts with the Eastland plant, Eastland vegetation suppliers, stockholders in the Speedy Motor Company, and, to a lesser extent, businesses that profit from the Eastland plant being open (i.e. the community at large). The stakeholders concerns should be assessed and advised founded upon a graduated scale of significance (Plant Closings, 2202, pp: 25).

Who are the affected stakeholders, and how should their interests be considered?

The first step in stakeholder analysis is recognizing major stakeholder groups. As we can imagine, the groups of stakeholders who will, either directly or indirectly, be affected by or have an effect on a firm's strategy and its execution can run the gamut from employees, to customers, to competitors, to the government. Ultimately, we will want to take these stakeholders and plot them on a chart, similar to that shown in the following figure.

Let's pause for a moment to consider the significant constituencies, we will be charting on our stakeholder map. Before we start, however, we need to recall us that stakeholders can be individuals or groups—communities, social or political organizations, and so forth. In addition, we can break groups down demographically, geographically, by level and branch of government, or according to other relevant criteria. In so managing, we're more likely to recognize important groups that we might otherwise overlook (Brenner, 1995, pp: 76).

With these facts in mind, we can see that, externally, a map of stakeholders will include such diverse groups as governmental bodies, community-based organizations, social and political activity groups, trade unions and guilds, and even journalists. National and local governments and international regulatory bodies will probably be key stakeholders for global firms or those whose strategy calls for larger international presence. Internally, key stakeholders include shareholders, business units, employees, and managers (Brenner, 1995, pp:88).

Identifying all of a firm's stakeholders can be a daunting task. In fact, as we will note again shortly, a list of stakeholders that is too long actually may reduce the effectiveness of this significant tool by overwhelming decision makers with too much information. To simplify the process, we propose that we start by identifying groups that drop into one of four categories: organizational, capital market, product market, and social. Let's take a closer gaze at this step (Brenner, 1995, pp: 78).

Step 1: Determining Influences on Mission, Vision, and Strategy Formulation. One way to analyze the significance and roles of the individuals who create a stakeholder group is to recognise the people and teams who should be conferred as strategy is developed or who will play some part in its eventual implementation. These are organizational stakeholders, and they include both high-level managers and frontline ...