What is Corporate Social Responsibility? - InnoTrain CSR

From the point of view of CSR, the question about stakeholder relationships can be
summarised as: Opposite whom and what is the company responsible for? Or: Who
is entitled to make the company responsible for what?
The theory and corporate practice offers different models for categorising the
stakeholder relationships into degrees of influences and effects and to systematically
illustrate the expectations of these groups as well as the risks and opportunities on
the part of the company.
In the practice, the focus is usually first on external stakeholders. Examples include
lobby groups, competitors, suppliers, customers or cooperation partners and
governmental offices such as taxation, environmental or cartel authorities. An
important consideration in this respect is the following: Which groups can become
active if this concerns the corporate policies? For example with legal procedures,
strikes or protests?
Internal target groups include for example management levels, groups within the
employees or a management board. A systematic stakeholder analysis can for
example yield informative insights on whether there are any conflicts of interest also
within the own company.
Exercise 3.3. (approximately 45 minutes)
The "Stakeholder map" exercise can be conducted using the example of companies
shown in the movies of this CSR compendium. If your group comprises participants
from different companies, the following approach is recommended for better contentrelated
participation and identification:
Hand every participant a flip chart paper and ask them to describe the main activity of
the selected company in the middle of the paper. It is helpful if the core business of
the company is described with a sentence that is as short as possible. Then distribute
the flip chart papers in the room.
Ask the participants to move around in the room for 10 minutes, walking from paper
to paper several times. During this time, the participants are asked to record on the
papers which stakeholders (= persons, groups and organisations) may be connected
to the company based on the described activity or are affected by the corporate
activity.
Introduce a second 10 minute round of brain storming. The participants are now
asked to assign topics and trends to the stakeholders in bullet form.
At the end of the exercise, you may wish to discuss individual flip chart papers in the
group or hand the participants their own "stakeholder map" for further reflection and
use in their own company.
The project "InnoTrain CSR" is organized by GILDE GmbH and has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the
views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. 12/2010
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