Stakeholder Engagement Of Walmart: Mapping, Purpose, And Approach

Stakeholder Mapping

Discuss about the Stakeholder Engagement of Walmart.

Figure 1: Stakeholder Identification

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Figure 2: Stakeholder Mapping

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Figure 3: Stakeholder Engagement Approach

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Analyzing the stakeholders: Walmart first needs to understand that knowing all the stakeholders is not possible. The organization must take into consideration all the people and institute that directly or indirectly affect the business (Riordan & Fairbrass, 2014). The requirement and engagement of different stakeholders are different. Some of the stakeholders will need to be informed and satisfied, some others are need to be engaged with the business. The community and stockholders are informed and consulted. The union labor union, government bodies, staffs are engaged directly. With the government regulation, political representatives and media, only the information are shared. Other stakeholder have low influence but high interest and those stakeholders involved within the organizational movement (Ntounis, Parker & Quin, 2015).

Defining Purpose: Different stakeholders are used for different purpose. In terms of developing policy, executives, stockholders, government and other stakeholders are used. Gathering product related feedback. Only the consumers are the source for this process. The organization will need to engage with the consumers for getting all the required information. Planning new outlets is a critical task. Involving consumers, employees, executives and government are essential for this purpose (Dawkins, 2015). Taking another example, refining the retail lines is one of the most crucial activity within a retail organization. Walmart will need to consider all the internal stakeholders along with the supplier for carrying out the task.

From the above description it is clear that various stakeholders may involve in different projects or activities. Walmart must define each of the purpose correctly so that the stakeholders can understand their role in the activity clearly. It is not possible to control the stakeholder activities all the time (Ho, Yang & Sung, 2014). Through defining the roles, it will be possible for Walmart to boost up the engagement of them as much as possible.

Mapping tools to recognized stakeholders: After, the recognition of the stakeholder, and defining the purpose, the tool or method through which the stakeholder can be engaged is identified. The stakeholders will be using the tool either individually or in a group. As the rank of the stakeholder will increase, the number of users will decrease for each of the tool (Riordan & Fairbrass, 2014). Taken as an example, the risk register will be used for storing the information regarding the potential risks associated with the project. Another example illustrates that the team management tool is used by the team leaders and management. No ordinary employee of the organization will be able to use this tool. Each of the tool will be accessed only by a valid id and password. This way the authorization to the tool can be established.

Selection of most appropriate method and technology: Investing into a lot of methodology and technology is just loss of capital. Considering the size of the organization and its processes, selection of the minimum amount of method and technology is essential (Ho, Yang & Sung, 2014). Incorporating sound technology for file and information sharing is essential for the tenement.

References

Dawkins, C. (2015). Agonistic pluralism and stakeholder engagement. Business Ethics Quarterly, 25(01), 1-28.

Ho, S. S., Yang, Y. F., & Sung, T. J. (2014). Store image consistency: new insights into stakeholder engagement. Design Management Journal, 9(1), 23-35.

Ntounis, N. F., Parker, C., & Quin, S. (2015). Stakeholder Engagement And Communicaton In UK Town Partnerships: An Empirical Study.

O’Riordan, L., & Fairbrass, J. (2014). Managing CSR stakeholder engagement: A new conceptual framework. Journal of Business Ethics, 125(1), 121-145.