Unsung Stakeholders

Last week’s set of stakeholders are pretty obvious, for the most part. Friends, family, and government all have a pretty direct impact on your life, and vice versa. Remember, they’re only stakeholders if they benefit from or are harmed by your actions, or if your actions respect or violate their rights. The distinction is important. Poking through your friend’s phone doesn’t harm them, but it does violate their right to privacy. Today I want to focus on three groups that we don’t think of as often as the others. We’re more inclined to disregard their interest, but they deserve some serious consideration.

1. Business

This is a big one. Business isn’t really an idea that picks apart easily. Wal-Mart is a business, but so is the tiny shop on the corner. Still, they’re both stakeholders in some of your decisions, to a degree. When you decide where to spend your money, you’re in a position to affect them. Obviously how much money you spend is also a big factor. Whether you buy a candy bar or not isn’t going to make much of a difference to a mega conglomerate like Wal-Mart, but if no one bought candy bars, they’d have to give some serious thought to what to do. The stakeholder model was developed for businesses, and a lot of them are keenly aware of their obligations not just to their shareholders, the people who own stock, but their stakeholders, which includes their employees, customers, and suppliers. The last ten years has seen individual people starting grassroots campaigns to pressure businesses into stopping unethical practices. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t, but either way, businesses recognize that as stakeholder action.

Where this really comes to the fore is in small business. Unlike large corporations, small businesses benefit a lot more from where you spend your dollars. Their reach is a lot smaller, and they often depend on the community to keep going, and spend a lot of time giving back to that community. They depend on good service, word of mouth, and building relationships with their customers, rather than expensive marketing campaigns. I’m not arguing that you should always buy from local business, that’s something that’s going to be governed by your values, which we’ll get into next week. But they are a stakeholder in your choice to go to Wal-Mart or not.

2. Teachers

This is a bit of a hot button issue in Ontario right now, where just yesterday there was a one day elementary school teachers’ strike. But teachers and mentors, whether they’re part of the education system or not, have a stake in the future of their pupils. They benefit from how well their pupils apply their lessons. One of the turning points in my education was when I realized just how much time my professors were willing to invest in me. Their recognition of my value helped me to push myself outside of my comfort zone, and I know many other students who can say the same. It’s a two way street, though. Students have a stake in what their teachers teach, and how they teach it. In the fairness of their grading, and the equitable treatment of students. A teacher who won’t call on women in their class is disregarding her stakeholders just as much as one who teaches intelligent design in a science class.

3. You

We often think of doing good as putting others before yourself, and there’s good reasons for that. But you’re a stakeholder in your choices, and you’re capable of respecting and violating your rights. How you fit in with the other stakeholders in your life isn’t a straightforward question to answer. It’s going to depend on your values, and how you regard yourself in relation to others. But giving away your last dollar, while noble in some sense, also seems like the wrong thing to do, because it undervalues you. It disrespects your stake in that dollar, and in your well-being. We can’t leave ourselves out of the equation, but on the other hand, we can’t be the only thing that matters, and leave everyone else out. I’ll dig into that more deeply in the coming weeks.

So today I’ve introduced three stakeholders you didn’t think you had. Give it some thought over the holidays. How do these fit into your life? How do you weigh them against or around the considerations of your friends, your family, and your government? For a more values based look at this, you can check out the posts I’ve been doing on heroes over at my gaming blog, TPK. Your life is more complex than any character’s, but sometimes it helps to simplify. Next week I’ll be taking a break from this stakeholder business to look at Concept Crucible’s year in review. A lot’s gone on, and we’ve come pretty far. Have a happy holiday!