Identifying And Managing Stakeholders In Snap Inc.

Stakeholders in Snap Inc.

From the above-identified stakeholder’s group there are subgroups of stakeholders present in the company. The company is a web service conglomerate that they cannot neglect to consider in the business model. The identified stakeholders for Snap Inc. are listed below.

Employers – the company is in web service entertainment business. Therefore, the employers in their headquarter branch and other branches are the part of the group of employers. It provides employment to approximately 1900 people in the company. They are also considered major part of the company. The company also offers multimedia web and mobile application for their customers. The employers are very satisfied to work on the fast-paced environment of the company. They have also recognised the company to environment friendly and knowledgeable individuals (Snap.com 2018). Though some have complained about the transparency in the information that are communicated to them are very less.

• Government – the company is affected by the LA government and partly by the US government. The government has instrumental value vested in the company. The Neighbourhood council of LA is known is also an authoritative body to be interested in the company’s prospect. This is mainly because of the employment generation of the company. This is also a factor that influence in the macro economy of the country. Moreover, the environmental impact of the company’s operation is also a concern of the governing body of the company(YouTube 2018).
• Suppliers – the suppliers of the company’s are divided in five parts that are Lense suppliers from the venture of them with Looksery, Spectacles business, Broadcasters content through snap chat stories and mobile magazine content writers (Snap.com 2018). The Suppliers can also be categorised as the web engineers and software developers of the company. As a multimedia and web service developer’s corporation, they plays a very important role in the stock market.
• Owners and partners – the founder of the company as well as in the position of CEO is Evan Spiegel. He is also recognised as the youngest person in to found a billion dollar company. The co founder and Chief Technological Officer Bobbly Murphy is as much a  contributor to this company as Evan. Both of the partners jointly own the company. The other important person is Michael Lynton the chairperson of Snap Inc (Snap.com 2018).
• Customers – the major customers of the company are the web application users, the selfie obsessed millennial and camera users. The innovators that likes to use the different feature in the camera or lenses are also the customers of the company. The geo filters and storytelling is also used by the millennial. They also have the spectacles, which can be stated as the creative and tech perceptive electronics users of the products.
• Communities – the LA communities are the excluded stakeholders of the company that are not involved in the economic transaction with the company. The major communities are affected by the employment policy, employment culture in Snap, employment rate, culture and revenue of the company. The community is affected by the company’s decision regarding the employment.
• Disinterested public and media – the media and the general public are indirectly affected by the company’s profitability. The media channels will get more news feed from the company and prospect and profitability information. Evan Spiegel also became a major socialite after the relaunch of the company (Snap.com 2018).
• Investors – the investors are the capital suppliers of Snap. Over the years, Snap has through many mergers and acquisition in the company. It has been listed in New York Stock exchange. The major asset management companies have bought it share in the company. Like Fidelity, T Rowe, Blackrock Inc. The two partners of the company Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy own the 45 % of the shares of Snap Inc. (Snap.com 2018)

Investors – the investors can be from two segments. The capital investors are the one that ventures by investing through a huge amount. As an internal stakeholder, their motive is depended on the financial performance of the company. The shareholders are also the major investors in the company. After floating the 55 % share of the company, they have gathered investments from shareholders interests (Ferrero et al. 2014). The accumulated Initial Public Offering was of 20 billion dollar to 25 billion dollar. The employees of the company were also having some of the ESOPs. The other major employers are Benchmark and Lightspeed venture collaborators who have more than 22 million of their shares (Freeman 2012). Additionally, the T Rowe., Coatue management, LLC, and Vanguard are also the important shareholders of the company (Harrison et al.2015).

• Employees – the employees are the main stakeholders as well as the direct stakeholders. They are also of highest priority to satisfy the employees. To develop the company’s service and products, the employers must be considered in the focused part of stakeholder’s model. The compensation structure is okay according the review by the employers in the job listing and review sites. The employees are highly satisfied and the positive environment is working friendly. However, the secretiveness of the information and non-transparency of the information about the business is a negative aspect pointed by the employees. Regarding the job security, they are less concerned and would not prefer the jobs. After the huge loss in 2016 there was a negative impact of the poor financial performance, though they recovered from the situation very fast in 2017 of the floatation of the IPO (Mansell 2015).
• Customers – the customers are the major internal stakeholders that the company must focus into. As the revenue source of the company is then customers. Therefore, from a stakeholder’s point of view the company must consider that in the company.  The products of the company must satisfy the customers in the company. As a camera company, they have satisfied the present millennial that have satisfied them truly. The mobile friendly contents are very useful for the users of the application. The messaging feature is also very important part of the company’s revenue model. The company is also very important part of the company.
• Communities – the community of that L A is affected by is Snap’s prospects. The people in LA may be excluded stakeholders, but they are slightly affected by that interest. The groups of people in the organisation and their objective, policies and actions influence the stakeholder’s alliance in the company (Mansell 2015). As with the urgency and communities history and feature affects the everyday operations and outcome of the company.

The stakeholders are the traditionally considered to be the major group among the business model and must be regarded accordingly. The group of individual those are directly or indirectly connected with the company must be recognised as group of individual that have influence over the objective or policy related decisions. The stakeholders are identified in the above analysis and the subgroups are also identified. The stakeholder’s relationship management has become necessary for the business. The competitiveness of the company’s depends on the satisfaction of the recognised stakeholders. The interest groups must be involved in formulating the strategy. The philosophical approach involves collaborating with them, communicating, contracting and motivating to be cooperative in the decision making process (Blowfield and Murray 2014). The three approaches to stakeholder’s management is normative, descriptive and instrumental in nature. The Normative approach to the company is known as considering the stakeholder’s aim and aligning that with the management of the corporation. It also represents the stakeholder’s interest. The descriptive approach to stakeholder’s management is to take into considerations of the suggestions of the people who show their interests in achievement. Instrumental approach is known as calculating the key consequence that the company may face due to stakeholders management. Thus the correct strategy is formed according the outcome of addressing the interest of the stakeholders. The competition in the business is high in the multimedia with the emergence of different strong competitors in the industry (Blowfield and Murray 2014). Therefore, stakes are high if a corporation does not consider the competitions and trend of the usage. The stakeholders are there to discuss the trends and demand the latest as well as innovative and creative features. Different corporate governance goals consist of the demands by the stakeholders. The link between the strategies and their application is critical insofar to consider, as this would ensure better alignment in achieving the goal. The instrumental perspective nature of the stakeholders considers that the company’s profitability is directly related with the stakeholder’s interest in the company.

Strategies for Managing Stakeholders

The stakeholders are of three types. The primary stakeholders who are very much involved in the economic transaction with the company. The stakeholder’s influence must be dependent on the business strategy. The stakeholder’s relationship management decides the level of power they have in the business. The managers of the organisation are key persons to manage the stakeholder (Harrison et al. 2015).

There are several strategies that Snap Inc. may consider to manage the stakeholders. The swing strategy is to change the influence of the rules, which governs stakeholders of the company. The theory considers two types of stakeholders and categorise them in the highly cooperative and highly threatening stakeholders. The stakeholders influence is one of the most important elements to be considered. In this theory, they take into account the mixed feelings of the stakeholders. The mixed blessings of the stakeholders are appropriate and the firm should collaborate with this stakeholders to maximise the positive influences and minimise the threatening abilities.

The hold strategies are to maintain the position of the company in the industry and remain with the company’s current strategy. This generic strategy of the organisation considers the main ground of the strategy is to remain very quit and secretive about the plan. The main feature of this strategy is that it has low competitive threat and very much cooperation from the stakeholders of the organisation (Harrison et al. 2015). The change in the stakeholder’s behaviour is also considered less. It also divides the stakeholders in two dimensional matrix that are easy to interpret from the stakeholder’s analysis through this matrix (Crane and Matten 2016). With Evan Spiegel’s current interview, it is evident that he wants his stakeholders to put the trust in a proper way while maintaining the privacy of the current customer’s base. As Snap chat has a history of leaking millions of customers base at the time of launch, they also should go by the hold strategy for the current employers of the business too.

Offensive strategy is used when the company is in highly competitive market or industry. In this strategy, the company may have the first mover advantage in this strategy and thus it may be fruitful for the business. This can also be perceived as an aggressive move to the stakeholders, but as long as the organisation has the proper resource it can afford to be offensive. This increases the market share of the business, ultimately affecting the shareholders perspective of the organisation. After floating, the 55 % of Snap Inc.’s share in NASDAQ and NYSE the company has benefited from the equity capital by investing in Bitmoji (Mansell 2015). Other acquisition s of the company can also be recognised to be a bit aggressive in nature. However, the 70% of the voting power lies with the CEO and his co founder, other identified shareholders and communities, government council have a say in deciding the objectives and policies of the company (Mansell 2015).

Categorizing Stakeholders

Defensive strategy has been utilised by Snap in resolving the situation of the company when they faced allegation of leaking millions of customer’s database (Mansell 2015). The defensive management tool is to fending off the attack. This tool to retain the stakeholders was also applied by Snap in defending the company against the lawsuit by Reggie Brown, the former marketing officer of Snap Inc. His allegation was against the owners as he claimed to launch the Snap concept as Picaboo, which was stolen by the recent owners. In this strategy, they fended off the allegation and became defensive to retain the reputation among the company in their stakeholders business.

Snap Inc. is a global conglomerate mainly focusing on the three different core business, which a mobile application, cameras and messages for communication through the application. Moreover, the company also sales spectacles and other web services in different area. The company also reported a loss of 2.2 billion in the quarterly a reports in the company. Therefore, it can be said it must look for positively influencing the stakeholders and minimise the threat.The also must focus on the corporate social responsibility which may influence their audience in positively. The environmental and social impact of the company’s policy must be recognised. Consolidating the process by managers to properly categorise the audiences or the stakeholders of the company. The value reduction is of high consequence on the company and the face loss affects investors as they affect the financial performance as well as the good will of the company. The company may try to differentiate the process and categorise as their functions. This would certainly divide the customer base and the company may utilise the operation process to its optimum level. According to the CEO, the millenials are the main customers of the organisations and they are going to focus their development on that. The corporate and social ethics should be maintained in the company.

Reference

Beauchamp, T.L., Bowie, N.E. and Arnold, D.G. eds., 2014. Ethical theory and business.

Blowfield, M. and Murray, A., 2014. Corporate responsibility. Oxford University Press.

Bobby Banerjee, S., 2014. A critical perspective on corporate social responsibility: Towards a global governance framework. Critical perspectives on international business, 10(1/2), pp.84-95.

Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Donaldson, T. and Preston, L.E., 2011. The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of management Review, 20(1), pp.65-91.

Ferrero, I., Michael Hoffman, W. and McNulty, R.E., 2014. Must Milton Friedman embrace stakeholder theory?. Business and Society Review, 119(1), pp.37-59.

Freeman, R.E., 2012. A stakeholder theory of the modern corporation. Perspectives in Business Ethics Sie, 3, p.144.

Freeman, R.E., Wicks, A.C. and Parmar, B., 2014. Stakeholder theory and “the corporate objective revisited”. Organization science, 15(3), pp.364-369.

Harrison, J.S., Freeman, R.E. and de Abreu, M.C.S., 2015. Stakeholder theory as an ethical approach to effective management: Applying the theory to multiple contexts. Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios, 17(55), p.858.

Mansell, S., 2015. Book Review: Rejoinder to Veldman’s review of Capitalism, Corporations and the Social Contract: A Critique of Stakeholder Theory (Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 271-275). Sage UK: London, England: Sage Publications.

Snap.com. (2018). Snap Inc.. [online] Available at: https://www.snap.com/en-US/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].    

YouTube. (2018). Snapchat’s three-part business model with CEO Evan Spiegel (2015 Code Conference, Day 1). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqPHordzhdw [Accessed 6 Jan. 2018].