Stakeholders are defined in many ways, while the initial meaning referred only to the people who have

an easily observed stake in the company such as the shareholders, the managers, the employees, stockholders, customers, suppliers, creditors, investors and the government, the term has been extended to mean anyone with an interest in the company/organisation. These can be considered as external stakeholders, such as the general public, communities, suppliers, activist groups, business support groups, schools, future generation, the media etc. Johnson & Scholes have defined stakeholders as: Stakeholders are those individuals or groups who depend on the organisation to fulfil their own goals (objectives) and on whom, in turn, the organisation d epends. (Lecture slides) Also: A stakeholder in an organization is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization's objectives (Freeman, 1984, p. 46). According to Lozano (2005) the employees and customers are the most important stakeholders that keep a company alive, they most obviously are the ones who keep the company afloat by providing it with necessary resources (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). This is referred to as instrumental stakeholders theory and it provides a clear example of how and why employees and customers can affect a company/organisation. We can take as an example of the power of the employees the General Motors strike in 2007, in Canada when 73,000 workers when on strike and the company had to reach a settlement as many of the companys operations were shut due to the strike. Another example is the 2006 strike in Wal-Mart where 200 employees when on strike protesting against the poor working conditions. As a result of the strike, later on in 2008 the company paid $640 million to settle suits filed by employees. An example of consumer power is the boycott of a clothes retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Girlcott who lunched a line of T-shirts with messages such us Who needs brains when you have these?. In response a group of teenagers protested against this messages and the retailer took them of the market recognising that the messages promoted a stereotype. Of course the different types of stakeholders affect the company in different ways. According to Mendelow the easiest most efficient way of mapping stakeholders is taking in consideration the level of power and combining it with the level of interest that they have in the company. This way we can divide stakeholders as non-activist who dont have any power in the decision making and stakeholder power when they have the power to decide (Arnstein, 1969) It has been argued weather companies should try to please their stakeholders or just act as a business, pursuing profit maximisation. As pursuing profit will help the stakeholders as well as the community as the company will pay more tax as they make more profit.

An interesting case in this category was the sustainability-driven fruit drinks company innocent (Brown and Grayson, 2009). When invited by McDonald's to include innocent's fruit smoothies as part of the happy meal menu for children, the company was unsure how to respond. Collaborating with McDonald's could have a serious impact on the company's reputation for sustainability. To reach a decision the company polled our regular drinkers a few weeks ago to ask them about it, and 72% said they would actively like us to be in McD's [McDonald's], 17% said they didn't care, and 9% said we shouldn't be there. (Innocent, 2007). After a de cision had been reached, the company opened a blog on their webpage on this issue engaging with critical customers publicly. Nestl gave in to pressure from Greenpeace and promised a zero deforestation policy in its palm oil supply chain. After just 8 weeks of intense campaigning and meetings with the company Nestle came come up with what Greenpeace described as a comprehensive policy that will be monitored by the Forest Trust. Nearly 1.5m saw Greenpeaces spoof Kit Kat advert, over 200,000 emails were se nt and activists demonstrated at Nestl HQs worldwide. Greenpeace said We didnt expect Nestl to come up with this policy so quickly.

Bibliography
Freeman, R. Edward (1984). Strategic Management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman. ISBN 0-27301913-9.