Differences in Stakeholders

Abstract

All kinds of organizations share some common characteristics, as we saw in Chapter 2. Yet organizations are also remarkably different. They differ in purpose, in size, in complexity, in technology, in the uncertainty of the environment within which they have to work, in how they are organized, and in many other ways. The mobile manager can easily recognize many of these differences, if not so easily understand them. Students can read about them in studies on contingency theory, which was also briefly described in Chapter 2. Chapter 5 is about one difference between organizations that senior managers must understand if they are to survive in a new organization; it is a difference that also affects junior and middle managers’ jobs. It is in the people who have an interest in the organization, which may cause them to seek to influence managers’ actions. These people are called ‘stakeholders’ because their interests (their ‘stake’) are affected by the actions of the organization.