External Threats and Opportunities

As a manager, you will act as an intermediary between the community of stakeholders and your organization. Part of your role as a manager, as well as your role as a doctoral thinker, is to address challenges that may arise from the organization, from stakeholders, or from external factors—be they environmental, cultural, or societal. For this Discussion, you should focus on big picture, higher-level approaches as noted below.

Given the current challenges facing the organization stemming from "environmental" pressures (in the broadest sense of the word), and from the historical-cultural traditions related to the country of your choosing today, identify processes and tools organizations' managers could use to address these challenges. Be sure to address how a manager can prepare for environmental contingencies through intra- and inter-organizational collaboration, where the individual manager functions at both an operational level and as a symbol and as a representative of the organization in society.

Communication within an organization has become an interregnal part of management. Stakeholders have become an influential part of business, when dealing with policies, decisions and procedures (Clutterbuck & Scholes, 1998). As a Director of Client Services, this student has developed several reports and presented data to stakeholder to obtain support for migration projects, new acquisitions and budget increases.

This student in his role as Director of Client services has used several tools to provide business intelligence to senior management and stakeholder. The use of a sustainability evaluation and reporting system provides an insight into quantitative and qualitative viewpoints of the organization for presentation to stakeholder (Perrini & Tenacati, 2006).

This student utilized purchased software to gather data and provide visualization-driven reporting, analysis and dashboard for assessment of the corporate goals. This tool provided census information for this student, in order to understand the environment of sales in different industries.

Critical information such as location of business, annual revenue, number of employees and organizational structure were all valid in identifying a target market. This student also created a database to track information of previous sales different customers, in order to identify a trend and compare purchasing patterns in different environmental conditions. The information from the tools provided management with the information to provide improvement to organizational goals and direction to stakeholder and shareholders.

The tools also modeled different environmental scenarios allowing the organization to determine the effects of individual sales associates on overall company production. The tools ability to predict the effect of a sales associate falling short of their yearly quota provided the organization with the ability to prepare a contingency plan for an unforeseen circumstance. The tools provided value to the organization in preparing them for the current economic climate in the United States. The ability to predict anticipated reduction in the budget from longtime customers and the decline of new business sales helped the organization adjust their annual numbers.

In order to enhance the relationship with stakeholders, organization can obtain feedback through surveys, involve stakeholder in understanding the criteria' needed to succeed, and invite opinions and comments in an open form (Clutterbuck & Scholes, 1998).

References

Clutterbuck, D & Scholes, E. (1998). Communication with stakeholders: An integrated approach. Long Range Planning, 31 p. 227-238.

Perrini, F & Tencati, A. (2006). Sustainability and stakeholder management: the need for new corporate performance evaluation and reporting systems. Business Strategy and Environment, 15 p. 296-308.