Competitive strategy and strategic agendas. Introduction. Porter’s five forces and strategic analysis, страница 7

Stakeholder analysis can be effected for each one of the five competitive forces. For each force there is a need to examine both the key mental and emotional states which underpin perceptions of value, decisions to enter and exit and buyer decisions to satisfy their need in an alternative manner. This truly opens up a new frontier for enquiry in strategic management, not merely in practical terms but also in the construction of theory. In practical terms, stakeholder analysis may be developed further to cope with the dynamics of change when market and key competitive forces change. In particular, we might plot stakeholders’ influences and attitudes over time curves especially through the illustrations shown in Figures 10 and 11.

Figure 12. Stakeholder influence grid.

A further refinement would be to distinguish between the stakeholder’s own influence over a specific strategic issue (the horizontal axis) and the influence over that particular stakeholder (the vertical access) depicted in Figure 12. Note that influence is plotted across both axes in this illustration but from different perspectives and using stakeholder colour codes to assist in the analysis: e.g. green (favourable) yellow (neutral) and red (against). Clearly this grid will give us not merely a view of stakeholders’ influences but also our own influence. This may generate creative thinking as to how to influence stakeholders.

As a consequence of the above, key questions for future research might also include:

•  What are the key linkages between the agendas of a strategic group, those of a particular company and those of specific influential managers?

•  During a period of profound market shift, how do stakeholder agendas adapt or not adapt at the above levels?

•  How are these agendas affected by the activities of a rogue organization bent on innovation?

•  How do emotionally based agendas appeartoinfluenceandinteractwithmore cognitively based ones (Grundy, 1999)?

•  How do norms and expectations of financial performance within an industry themselves constrain and shape stakeholder agendas?

•  How do stakeholder agendas change as a result of strategic learning by key players in the industry (Senge, 1990; Grundy, 1993)?

•  How does the strategic learning of key players’ influence the mind-set generally of the industry (Grundy, 1995)?

•  What influence does changes in key managershaveovertheindustrystructure, and how is this change mediated through stakeholder agendas?

This is indeed a potent research agenda and one which it is hoped will inspire researchers towards a greater interest in the softer aspects of competitive strategy.

Biographical Note

Dr Tony Grundy is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management at Cranfield School of Management and the Director of Cambridge Corporate Development. He has written and published widely in the areas of corporate strategy and organizational change.

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