Stakeholder theory

Over a couple of years of studying postgraduate marketing I have heard the term "stakeholder theory" come up time and time again in various contexts but usually meant something different in each context, until I read a particular article whilst researching for this blog.


The article is called "Rethinking internal communication: a stakeholder approach". The article by Welch and Jackson explores the notion of engaging with your internal stakeholders by utilising efficient communication strategies. The definitions offered by the article in relation to the true meaning of a stakeholder and internal communication provided a very fresh approach to a subject that as far as I am concerned was becoming very difficult to decipher throughout this process.


The authors describe internal communication as communication that happens constantly within an organisation and covers all levels of communication, including informal conversations or information heard over the "grapevine" (Welch & Jackson 2007, 178). The authors do go on however to attempt to form their own definition of internal communication and the initial definition they came up with was "Internal communication is understood here as the strategic management of interactions and relationships between stakeholders at all levels within organisations" (Welch & Jackson 2007, 183). This definition sheds a new light for me on how I see internal communications and especially within my organisation, CBS.


Internal communication has always been seen to be somewhat part of our everyday activities as employees, sometimes in a robotic way. "We must always be seen to be communicating what is going on internally and externally, providing any information we can". This article somewhat throws that robotic notion out the window as it describes internal communication as a strategic move and one that can assist internal stakeholders, especially staff members to be part of a bigger strategic initiative. If these internal stakeholders are to be part of the strategic management of such initiatives the organisation must in fact identify them (Welch & Jackson 2007, 183).


This task is not as easy as what you first consider it to be. Even the authors state that all organisations in different sectors will have different employee groupings and in fact they focus on higher education in the UK as an example. "For example, in UK higher education the following staff grouping are commonly identified: manual and ancillary, academic support, administrative, academic, and research" (Welch & Jackson 2007, 184). In an effort to make the make the stakeholder group identification a little easier, the authors have broken an organisation into different groups at different levels. These include the following:

• all employees
• strategic management or top management (e.g. CEOs, senior management etc.)
• middle management (supervisors, line managers, directors etc.)
• work teams (departments)
• project teams 

By breaking the organisation into smaller groups it makes it easier to tackle internal communication at an implementation level. The authors do however note that internal communication is also subject to participation in the communication strategies and the direction and content of the communication (Welch & Jackson 2007, 184). The authors have outlined the flow of communication in a chart demonstrated below:

Figure 4 The position of internal corporate communication within integrated corporate communication

Internal communication is also demonstrated in the below diagram:

Figure 3 Internal corporate communication


The article also describes the use of various medias to communicate internally. "Controlled media such as internal newsletters, newspapers, video presentations and podcasts allow senior management to control message content, format and channel" (Welch & Jackson 2007, 187). The notion of internal controlled media is discussed at length in the "To blog or not to blog" post.


The article has highlighted a number of areas in the recommendations for future studies including determining employees preferences for a type or types of communication media. This may be an interesting area of study for CBS to look at as a starting point in revamping their communication strategies. What type of media do the staff actually want to see? Clearly the current blog and homepage are not working so what other forms of controlled media may be beneficial for communication? However the authors also pose the question of possible information overload if there is too much internal corporate communication. Perhaps this is another area that could be researched further at CBS.


Overall the article was thoroughly enjoyable to read and made me question many of the current practices in place at CBS. The blog doesn't work, people find the homepage too hard to use, there is a lack of quality corporate communication in hardcopy form so where too next? The component of the article that I found most intriguing though was the role of trust in internal communication. Welch and Jackson (2007, 190) state "quality communication creates trust, that trust is an aspect of social climate and that consequently, communication creates climate. On the other hand, it could imply that trust creates quality communication. Either way, non-task internal corporate communication would seem to have a role to play in developing employee commitment and trust. It could be argued that communication leads to trust and understanding of strategic direction. If internal stakeholders do not understand their organisation's strategic direction, they cannot be committed to it and may be reluctant to trust it or their senior managers."


Reference: Mary Welch, Paul R. Jackson, (2007),"Rethinking internal communication: a stakeholder approach", Corporate Communications: An International Journal 12 (2): 177-198. doi: 10.1108/13563280710744847