The Internet Moderating Impact among Stakeholders in Modern Organizations: A Conceptual Analysis of Service Management Environment

Literature Review And Analysis

Organization stakeholders are any group or individuals who can affect or are affected by a firm (Greenwood, 2001) and without whose support the organization would cease to exist (Freeman, 1984; Evan & Freeman, 1988). While all companies potentially have different sets of stakeholders, all companies usually respond to six prominent stakeholder groups: customers, employees, suppliers (of goods and/or services), owners (shareholders), government, and social groupings (for example, communities and/or societies, as a whole). These groups of stakeholders are more salient because they possess legitimacy, urgency, and power (Mitchell et al., 1997; Agle, 1999). Atkinson, et al. (1997) present stakeholders as fitting into two major groups: the environmental stakeholders and the process stakeholders. The environmental stakeholders are customers, owners, competition, government, and environmentalists who define a company’s strategies. The process stakeholders are the employees and suppliers that plan, design, implement, and operate the processes to make and deliver the company's product to its customers.

Several researchers have highlighted the high level of interdependence between the corporation and its primary stakeholder group and noted that without continuing participation of primary stakeholders, an organization cannot survive as a going concern (Agle, 1999).