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1. Describe your company and analyze the various primary and secondary stakeholder groups, their roles, and relationships.
The Eastman Chemical Company is one of the largest companies in the United States. This business deals with the manufacture and sale of chemicals, plastic, fiber and supplies its products worldwide. It was founded in 1920 and has established 44 manufacturing sites all over the world. Some of the products, which this company manufactures and sales, include cellulose acetate fiber and PET polymers for packaging. The Eastman Chemical Company has approximately 13500-employee base in its various manufacturing sites worldwide. This company has built up regional structures, which are strong regional affiliates such as a branch in Longview, Texas. The company uses regional organizational structure; the affiliated companies are tasked to contact customers and manage customer services, forecast product requirement, promote products and ensure there is efficient distribution of products. The companys social activities aim to improve health, environmental performance and the safety services through the developed global voluntary initiative (Eastman Chemical Company, 2013).
Eastman Chemical is a business company, which recognizes its responsibility and strives to be a good corporate citizen by supporting what is important to a community it operates in. The company aims to promote the living standards of people and to support health care, environmental performance and safety. The company works with various groups of people such as its stakeholders. The companys stakeholders are groups of people or individuals who are most likely to affect the results of a project or be affected by the proposed project of a company. The internal stakeholders are the management and the employees while the external stakeholders are shareholders, public or community, suppliers and customers.
The company considers that all the stakeholders play an important role in its performance. The contribution of all the stakeholders is equally important for the firm to succeed, to create profit, and build competitive advantage. Shareholders of the company play an important role in raising capital for the Eastman Chemical Corporation and the suppliers offer the company credit services in the form of raw materials for manufacturing of finished product to serve its customers. Customers have promoted the company through purchasing its products and services while the community or society provides the company with a conducive environment to operate well. The management of the company also plans and implements business policies to broaden its operation and to make business more profitable. The employees support the implemented policies of the company by cooperating with the management. Such structure connects all the stakeholders and without one of them the company would not operate well. For instance, the company gets raw materials from the creditors on credit and produces products, which customers buy while the government regulates the companys operation within the authorized limit.
2. Recommend ways the stakeholders can influence the destiny of your business.
Eastman Chemical Company sells its product directly to the customers through its chain of supply delivering its finished product to the end customer. Such a chain of supply enables the company to focus on each individual customer and identify his/her needs. The company’s supply chain is more advanced than the conventional supply chain where goods reach the customer through the retail outlets hence; its operation is based on building a lasting connection with the final consumer ( Blazek & Castek, 2009). The Eastman Chemical Company business owners and customers feedback help the company to make all the necessary changes in services provided and the products sold. The companys standards are maintained through supplies providing quality raw materials to enable the enterprise to produce the high-quality goods. Customers can affect the way Eastman Corporation Company promotes and develops its product by indicating their requirements and preferences in their feedback (Spitzeck & Hansen, 2010). This enables the company to increase sales of a particular product or make the necessary changes in the product. Thus, the companys stock is regulated by the customers demand. Consumers enable the company to improve its business through indicating the issues that are to be addressed.
3. Create a plan on how you would encourage stakeholders to form a coalition to help you achieve your goals. Include a discussion of the specific assistance you think the coalition could provide.
As the CEO of Eastman corporation company, I would establish the following issues in order to encourage stakeholders to form a coalition.
1. Encourage stakeholders to explore the coalition options with the established conservative organizations based on the set goals and the companys vision. This encourages companys stakeholders to join the coalition without fear of failure due to a strong established companies.
2. Ensure the developed vision of the coalition benefits all the stakeholders involved. The threat and pressure from the stakeholders who did not joint coalition should be identified and solved through the dialogue and targeted actions.
3. The company should share with the stakeholders the information gathered during the survey conducted to get a broader understanding of the opportunities in the region.
4. The educational tools, communication process and information should be used to promote interaction with stakeholders who have not joined the coalition.
Due to the coalition the stakeholders are able to avoid making premature decisions. The coalition can boost the participation and open dialogue in order to encourage stakeholders from diverse background and perspective to participate in identifying and setting coalition objectives and goals (Stern & Hicks, 2000). If the stakeholders do not actively participate in the process, this can cause domination by loudest, strongest or good resource groups who tend to modify the process for their own benefit. Coalition promotes understanding among its members, any conflict is solved through the dialogue.
4. a. The challenges encountered in encouraging stakeholders to form a coalition include the following:
1. The stakeholders may have a negative as well as a positive impact on natural resources. Thus, it is vital to identify each individual stakeholder, which requires a lot of time. This can impede the work of the coalition.
2. Even though the stakeholders efforts are scaled up to the companys scale the coalition still faces a challenge associated with bringing different stakeholders together. This might prevent the cooperation.
3. The coalition involves various stakeholders such as private sector industries, banks, local and municipal politicians and others. The stakeholders may fail to share a common language and in case of political tension, ethnic difference or economic difference this may create problems and impede the cooperation. This will withhold the company from achieving the set goals.
4. Various issues, incentives and motives of the stakeholders create resistance to form a coalition. These aspects are to be addressed before coalition is formed.
b. steps to undertake to overcome the challenges are;
1. To hold meetings and roundtable discussions to bring together the opposing groups to discuss issues of shared interest (Carpenter, 1994).
2. To organize mediation offered by professional third party to help stakeholders to resolve the issue.
3. To train the stakeholders to participate effectively as it promotes the operation among the members of such a coalition.
4. To raise awareness and education among the stakeholders to improves their understanding of the issues in question.
5. To hold a joint fact-finding to enable stakeholders work together and investigate the facts and misunderstood issues.
6. Joint initiatives will help to address the major issues including those stakeholders who may not necessarily be in conflict.