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better formulate, implement, and monitor their strategies, and this is why stakeholder
analysis is a critical factor in the ultimate implementation of a strategy.
Identifying Stakeholders
The first step in stakeholder analysis is identifying major stakeholder groups.

As you 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 important constituencies we will be
charting on our stakeholder map. Before we start, however, we need to remind
ourselves 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 doing, we’re more likely to identify important groups
that we might otherwise overlook.
With these facts in mind, you can see that, externally, a map of stakeholders
will include such diverse groups as governmental bodies, community-based
organizations, social and political action groups, trade unions and guilds, and even
journalists. National and regional governments and international regulatory bodies
will probably be key stakeholders for global firms or those whose strategy calls for
greater international presence. Internally, key stakeholders include shareholders,
business units, employees, and managers.
Steps in Identifying Stakeholders
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 important tool by overwhelming decision makers with too much
information. To simplify the process, we suggest that you start by identifying groups
that fall into one of four categories: organizational, capital market, product market,
and social. Let’s take a closer look at this step.

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