Stakeholders refer to individuals or groups associated with organizations, which can be divided into direct stakeholders and extended stakeholders. The former includes individual and institutional investors, customers and employees. The latter includes suppliers, alliance partners, industry associations, local communities, consumer associations, NGOs, media, government regulators, competitors, external directors and the public. The relationship between enterprise behavior and stakeholders and between stakeholders is a kind of mutual influence and interaction. Moreover, the stakeholder of an enterprise is still a concept that changes and develops constantly with the passage of time.
Most enterprises still manage stakeholder groups in a decentralized way. It is necessary for us to systematically look at and effectively use the interaction and influence among stakeholder groups from a higher perspective. This requires a comprehensive model to explain how stakeholders adapt to the organization. The general structure and relationship are shown in Figure 2. This model provides a preliminary framework for analyzing stakeholder groups from the perspective of company value chain and final financial performance. From this model, we can know that the core values or basic principles and leadership philosophy of enterprises can create a culture that dominates the operation and internal processes of enterprises; These practices and processes not only affect the concept of employees, but also affect the concept of customers and other stakeholders; Employee behavior directly affects the customers and other stakeholders they contact; Employee productivity, customer repeat purchase rate and the behavior of other stakeholders are directly related to the success of the company.
Comprehensive stakeholder management includes the comprehensive management of direct stakeholders and extended stakeholders. Compared with customers, enterprises often put the interests and needs of employees in a secondary position. However, it is extremely important to build stakeholder relations from the inside out. Managers must first establish the company's own "human capital", so as to achieve other goals of the company. As shown in the profit chain of Sears Company (Figure 3), cooperation and support with customers, suppliers and other external stakeholders begin with employees and internal partners. Employees are the starting point of all other stakeholders, and the successful development of total stakeholder management begins with enterprise employees, and the key to success lies in enterprise employees. Therefore, the concept of employees should be the most important concept of the company.
Peter. Drucker put forward the word "knowledge worker" in 1959, and predicted a revolution far away from the industrial production workshop that we are already familiar with. The traditional secret of success-rational use of resources, dominant market share and other factors are no longer effective. This illustrates the importance of employees from another angle. ①
The rebound of employee value will be more fully reflected in the near future. Harris (1998) pointed out in a survey of CEOs of large American companies (with assets of $6,543.8 billion and above) that 3/4 CEOs predicted that employees would become more key stakeholders than before in the near future, while only 4% CEOs thought that employees would no longer be important. ②
Third, how to achieve "employee-centered"
Compared with the previous management concepts of "product/quality-centered", "sales-centered" and "customer-centered", modern enterprises should pay special attention to their internal employees, establish and implement the "employee-centered" management concept as their leadership philosophy and basic values, and use these cultures, practices and processes to influence employees' concepts and behaviors, and then influence the concepts and behaviors of customers and other stakeholders. To this end, enterprises should pay attention to the following aspects:
1. Enterprises should not reorganize and lay off employees easily.
Corporate restructuring, layoffs and cost reduction plans will affect many people's lives and employee relations, and even short-term goals are difficult to achieve. Terence E. Deal and A11An A. Kenneky (1999) pointed out: "As many as 50%~75% of the restructuring plans failed to achieve the expected financial goals, or even failed to effectively improve performance." In particular, they mentioned that James champy, one of the founders of the restructuring theory, himself admitted that most of the restructuring projects studied by his consulting firm failed to achieve their financial goals (E .Deal and A.kemedy, 1999). Goetz and Baptista believe that the profit growth achieved by cutting costs is usually not as high as that achieved by other strategies. In Fortune 1988~ 1993, both profitable and growing enterprises achieved sustained profit growth in the early stage, and only 7% of these enterprises achieved profit growth by cutting costs.
Especially in the United States, nothing is more challenging than finding highly skilled employees and trying to keep them. The permanent turnover rate in the United States (excluding dismissal, mass layoffs and temporary dismissal) is 14.4%, and the employee turnover rate has reached the highest level in 20 years. According to an introduction about the turnover rate of American employees in The Economist in July, 2000, many analysts estimated that the turnover loss of employees was 65,438+0.5 times of employees' salary. People may never believe that it will be so high, but we must consider all the losses, including not only the cost of recruiting new employees, but also the loss of training, productivity and other potential losses.
Another invisible loss caused by layoffs is that it hurts the stability of the organization from the perspective of work vitality and employee morale. No matter how efficient the restructuring plan is, employees who stay in the enterprise usually have more work to do. In addition, many employees have lost close mentors and friends. In addition, after the employees who have served the enterprise for a long time are fired, the enterprise will lose the best employee communication relationship and organizational cultural values, and the enterprise will suddenly lose more people who inherit its corporate cultural values, which will lead to the destruction of the long-established corporate culture. When a company decides to lay off employees, it is almost impossible to make employees think that corporate values have no practical significance and keep employees consistent with the company's core values while laying off a certain proportion of employees.
2. Conduct employee surveys frequently.
In view of the importance of employees to the organization, enterprises should try their best to understand what employees care about, especially work-related, and carry out related work according to these and other feedback information, so as to win the support and loyalty of employees and guide their innovative spirit, which is also most helpful to attract and retain employees. Therefore, enterprises should often carry out employee surveys, try to seek dialogue with employees, understand employees' evaluation of enterprises, and strive to collect the following information that employees expect: (1) Fairness at work: fairness in company policies, salary, performance control and recruitment; (2) Organizational learning: organizational innovation, education and the ability to adapt to market changes; (3) Communication: the flow of necessary information and its transparency; (4) Flexibility and care: How does the company support the flexibility of work arrangement and the work-life balance that employees need? (5) Customer center: employees' related concepts and the urgency and attention of serving customers and giving them value; (6) Trust and authorization: confidentiality, responsibility, decision-making and group participation; (7) Effectiveness/clarity of management: clear and effective direction and communication strategy; (8) Job satisfaction: adequacy of support, suitability of the role to be placed, and whether it feels valuable (F.Wallker and W.Marr, 200 1).
3. Treat employees fairly, strengthen the construction of corporate culture, and promote the communication and integration of corporate values
Enterprise cohesion begins with the feeling that employees feel at home, which represents the way enterprises treat employees. Evidence that employees are sensitive to this issue can be found in a research report 1999 on Walker Information's views on American employee cohesion. "Unfair treatment given by management to employees" is the most common "violation of morality" incident, which is cited more frequently than sexual harassment, false reports and other potential unethical behaviors. ④
Organizational culture can not only change employees' behavior, but also subtly influence employees' personal values. The values of excellent enterprises can not only guide the cooperation among employees, but also motivate employees to develop in this direction. Facts have proved that many employees can improve their literacy and reach the standards required by corporate ethics. In a survey conducted by the American Ethics Resource Center, almost half of the 4000 respondents thought that vocational training for employees could improve the moral level of enterprises. 13% of the respondents believe that corporate ethics has promoted and improved the personal moral level of employees. If employees' values are basically the same as those of the enterprise and they are integrated into the working environment, the development prospect of the enterprise will be immeasurable. In order to make employees accept the values of loyalty to the company, enterprises must treat employees fairly and realize the communication and integration of corporate values. In this regard, it is very important to take effective measures to further strengthen corporate culture and related construction, but the actual work of many enterprises is far from in place.
4. Focus on improving employees' salaries, benefits, working conditions and flexible and convenient preferential arrangements.
Benefits, wages, etc. It is a key issue for employees. For employees who are considering changing jobs or looking for jobs, these are also key factors to consider. In addition to paying attention to the improvement of employees' salary, welfare and working conditions in the traditional sense, enterprises must also implement other flexible and convenient preferential arrangements with the changes of the times.
1984, when Robert Levering and Milton Moshutz first published the list of "100 Best Companies to Work for", only 1 company provided on-site day care. According to the list reported by Fortune magazine in June 5438+ 10, 2000, 29 companies in 100 now provide day care services. 1984 Only FedEx and Northwest Life provide employees with flexible working hours, and now 70 companies are doing so. The following are other preferential arrangements for employees of top 100 companies: (1) 53 companies offer on-the-job university courses; 9 1 companies provide tuition subsidies, of which 24 companies provide tuition subsidies of more than $4,000 per year. (2) 45 companies shortened their working hours in summer. (3) There are 72 companies that implement employee stock option plan. (4) 87 companies have set up telecommuting posts. (5) 89 companies have reduced their weekly working hours (Robert Levring and Milton Moskowitz, 2000).
5. "Impact on employees" analysis is an important part of strategic decision-making.
Strategic decision-making is a key factor related to the survival and development of enterprises. As an important part and one of the key steps of enterprise strategic decision-making, the effective implementation of "employee-centered" analysis is an important link. The analysis of "impact on employees" can provide enterprises with tools to weigh various factors and make decisions. The analysis of "impact on employees" can be carried out in the following order: analyze the possible advantages and disadvantages of each action plan for employees; Study the rights and responsibilities of employees; Consider the short-term and long-term consequences of the specific plan to be made: make the final decision and judgment.
A revolution that attaches importance to the role of stakeholders has begun, and establishing the management concept of "employee-centered" has become the requirement of the times. Enterprises that continue to stay in the traditional concept will gradually fall behind. Dominant enterprises and leading enterprises in this field will gain the loyalty and support of employees and other stakeholders, which will greatly improve the competitiveness of enterprises and realize the long-term healthy development of modern society; On the contrary, it will be gradually eliminated by the people and society.