The Dinner. 4/7

You are invited to a dinner.

Whatever your field of expertise: strategy, public relations, law, industry, energy, environment, consulting, finance... and whatever your missions, you are very welcome.

It's an informal but well-behaved dinner with a variety of inspiring guests: at the table, you'll be sitting alongside opinion and the media, opposite reputation and influence, close to positive law and its neighbour natural law, not far from case law and within fork's reach of artificial intelligence.

A dinner where you can share, discuss, question, reflect and make suggestions around the theme of the social acceptability of companies.

The Dinner. 1/7 - Appetizer

The Dinner. 2/7 - A slice of history

The Dinner. 3/7 - Steak Holder with seasonal flavours

4/7 - Audience medallions and relational trimmings

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It is essential for a company to have a better understanding of the audiences it talks to, so that it knows how to talk to them. Analysing your audiences - in this case, your stakeholders - to understand their characteristics and expectations helps you to build and manage relationships over the long term.

Drawing up a map will therefore make it possible to identify both the ground on which to build and the unevenness of the terrain that could lead to potential tensions or conflicts, so as to be able to anticipate them.

This is what Ronald Mitchell, professor of entrepreneurship at the Rawls College of Business (Texas), has proposed by classifying each audience according to three attributes:

- the power they have to influence the company

- the legitimacy of their relationship with the company

- the urgency of their demand on the company

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QUICK DEFINITIONS

? Power is held by a stakeholder when it has the means to impose its desire on the relationship with the company despite resistance.

? Legitimacy is based on legal and ethical grounds and enables the members of a group to give their consent. We might add that a stakeholder's legitimacy is strengthened by in-depth knowledge - even expertise - in the field in which the company operates.

? Urgency here refers to "the degree of immediate attention required by stakeholder demands (1)".

?Here is a diagram of this classification:

SINGLE-ATTRIBUTE CATEGORY

Latent stakeholders, identified by companies as having only one attribute among power, legitimacy and urgency. They include:

- dormant stakeholders (1) who have power but little or no interaction with the company (e.g. shareholders who have not been involved in all decisions concerning the organisation's direction and projects for a long time).

- discretionary stakeholders (2) who have legitimacy, such as a group of independent scientists with expertise in the company's sector of activity, but without the power to influence it or any urgent demands to make.

- demanding stakeholders (3) whose main characteristic is urgency. But without power or legitimacy, they have no measurable impact on the company. Examples include radical environmental groups who generate media attention through their actions but have neither the legitimacy nor the power of NGOs such as Greenpeace or the WWF.

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TWO-ATTRIBUTE CATEGORY

Expectant stakeholders to whom the company assigns two of the three attributes. They are more active than in the Latent class; management's commitment to them is therefore likely to be more intense.

- Stakeholders who are both powerful and legitimate are described as dominant (4) in reference to the legitimate claims they make on the company and their ability to act on these claims. For example, the many individual shareholders of a CAC40 group.

- Stakeholders who are potentially dangerous (5) for the company when urgency and power characterise them, and as such can become coercive, even violent. Wildcat strikes, sabotage and reprisals fall into this category. In 1972, General Motors employees at the Lordstown plant in Ohio welded soft drink cans to engine blocks to protest against new working hours...

?- dependent stakeholders (6) have no real power but have legitimate and urgent demands, and therefore depend on the tutelage of other stakeholders or the company to achieve their objectives.

If we return to the example of the oil spill in Brittany caused by the Amoco Cadiz, we know that ecological associations such as Friends of the Earth and the mayors of the worst-hit towns had launched urgent and legitimate requests for financial aid to clean up the coastline, but they had no power over the Amoco company to impose their demands.

THREE-ATTRIBUTE CATEGORY

When all three attributes are met, the definitive stakeholders (7) are considered to be authoritative in the relationship, and their expectations are given priority by the company's decision-makers: employees, suppliers, customers, public authorities, etc.

It is also possible for a dominant stakeholder to evolve into a definitive form.

For example, at various times during the 1990s, shareholders (dominant because they were legitimate and powerful) in groups such as IBM, General Motors, Kodak, Westinghouse and American Express saw the value of their assets plummet. They felt that the management of these companies had misrepresented their interests and argued that a change of strategy was urgently needed.

Several of the managers were removed from their posts at the request of these stakeholders, who had become definitive during the emergency.

FURTHER SYMMETRY

Ronald Mitchell's classification is not set in stone; audiences fluctuate and can acquire or strengthen an attribute, or vice versa. The nature of their relationship with the company will therefore evolve.

This is the case, for example, with public opinion through its many intermediaries.

As mentioned earlier, while opinion is primarily made up of judgements, beliefs and emotions, there are an increasing number of intermediaries with in-depth knowledge of scientific, economic, social and environmental issues. This is the case of NGOs, independent scientists, university researchers, journalists and even 'repentants' who have left their sector of activity and are perfectly familiar with its specific features.

Civil society now has the capacity to mobilise its own knowledge in a wide range of fields and to produce both a counter-expertise and the legitimacy to put the company's project, decision or activity up for debate. This brings greater symmetry to the relationship, a symmetry that is further strengthened by the resonance of the media and social networks.

?And as the search for symmetry plays an active part in social acceptability in that it aims to build a more committed and balanced relationship between the company and its stakeholders, we should briefly mention the symmetrical two-way model.

?Based on a dynamic of participation, this model consists of providing information, answering questions and integrating feedback from stakeholders. In other words, "building relationships with publics that constrain or enhance the organisation's ability to fulfil its mission (2)".

?This objective of sustainable relational architecture is reminiscent of the Slow PR defined by Thierry Libaert, who denounces the short-termism of communication where "strategy is transformed into tactics and reactivity becomes the watchword (3)" and proposes, instead, exchange, respect, flexibility of tools and stability of messages.

This proposal for a balanced relationship also evokes the theory of excellence developed by James E. Grunig, the aim of which is "to build bridges between the organisation and its various audiences by building and maintaining relationships with them (4)".

?And there you have it.

We've seen a proposal for classifying audiences so that we know better who we're talking to and how to talk better by seeking symmetry in the relationship.

The next services will focus on reputation risk management and how to preserve your social acceptability when you are a company with strong externalities. AI will also be involved.

See you soon!