D Communication Guide Dec. 2013 | Page 5

There is overlapping of the different categories stakeholders as it becomes obvious from this classification.  The Police  Powerful interest and community groups It gets even more complicated though. The company itself “creates” yet another category of stakeholders in the process of securing its operations.  Supply Chain  Owners and Investors Those stakeholders are called demanding. In this category fall all groups and individuals who are of critical importance in connection to securing the business operations. Such can be:  The State  Local Regulatory Institutions  Patent and License Authorities In order to map stakeholders and make stakeholder management possible scholars define them by assigning one or more of the three attributes that differentiate a stakeholder from a non-stakeholder. The attributes are as follows: urgency, legitimacy, and power (See pic., Mitchell, Agle, Wood, 1997). A stakeholder with more that one attribute becomes automatically more important to the company. The reason is that for example a combination of legitimacy and power, urgency and power or legitimacy and urgency can endanger a company’s operations by stakeholders acting upon certain claims or issues. Needless to say, the combination of the three attributes makes a stakeholder first priority. Here it is important to note that stakeholders can change class which makes stakeholder monitoring essential. 5