Sustainability in internal and external stakeholder relations

For the primary stakeholders, they must be closely watched and engaged as their withdrawal would me the stranded goal, future or the immediacy of the firm’s failure. The secondary stakeholders, being controlled by the firm but having a significant influence on its success and sustainability, needs to be engaged when decisions touching their operations or position in the firm are being made. All the categories need to be well informed as they can complicate or ease the process of implementing or introducing sustainability requirements in the firm (Chinyio, & Paul, 1, 29). In this essay, I demonstrate the need for both internal and external stakeholders to be informed, engaged, receive reports, and allowed to contribute to strategic decisions of the firm in order to lessen the burden of convincing or wooing the two parties to accept sustainability changes to be introduced in the firm.

I also demonstrate the benefits in and the hurdles in introducing sustainability requirements through the stakeholders. Internal stakeholders need to be developed for efficiency. One way of doing this is by developing a code of ethics. In the hotel industry, it involves promotion of values and virtues that enhance trust, speed and benefits to both the owner and the employees. The employees need to be trained and retrained in efficiency to reduce wastes. They can also be trained on how to effectively manage wastes through recycling, reusing and safe disposal for proper ecological management. with a strategic plan, McDonalds has been able, over the years, to meet client needs through a responsive and apt product development and customization process where they respond to what the market needs, of course, through a market research.

With the consumers constituting the most important component of the entire firm’s stakeholders, taking care of the consumers ensures loyalty, satisfaction and a sustainable customer base (Prud’homme & Louis, 116-126). Over the years, for instance, the McDonalds have developed the following products: the snack wrap, the premium salads, the happy meal, the chicken McNuggets, the French fries, the double cheeseburger, the chicken select strips, the egg McMuffin and the apple pies. Thinking of the customer is its business. When developing the product, one aspect the developer must consider and which determines the sustainability of such a product is its impact in meeting human needs, in context, of taste and fulfillment, conserving the environment and ensuring a peaceful and sustainable coexistence of the ecological world (Mansfield, 2009).

Supply chain management is another of the most important tools for maintaining a sustainable business in the hotel business. This, however, is a challenging chain to manage given the autonomy of the hotelier and the suppliers, warehouse providers and the distributors. Supply chain involves the selection and improvement of a product such as the French fries, the determination of the quality and raw material suppliers, contractual agreements with the supplier and standards for quality raw materials. The potatoes are supplied by three main farmers; that is, Jenn Bunger, 100 Circle Farms and Frank Martinez. “If you grow the best potatoes, you’re going to have the best French Fries,” (Frank Martinez, 1). However, people are reluctant to change. Such a change for better operations especially aiming at financial transparency, accountability and truthfulness of financial data as released during the annual general conferences or open days, may not be well received by the internal environment.

To create a good landing space, the management should always prepare the internal stakeholders for the need of such changes through education, informational forthrightness and involvement of the employees and medium level managers in the process re-engineering for the firm. Accurate and audited financial information, when released to the external shareholders, creates sustainability in a number of ways and is welcomed by the external users for a number of opportunistic reasons. First, it assures the users that the business is an ongoing concern. Environmentally, its reduces plastic use by more than 7 tons and continues to help in cleaning, tree planting and environmental campaigns (Catriona, 2-65). The opportunities in implementing changes for sustainability through external and internal stakeholders will always be many and outweigh the challenges therein.