Stakeholder Analysis Report

Stakeholder Analysis Report of Facebook

INTRODUCTION

Facebook is a social networking company which allows every user free access by creating an account on it. The company aims at bringing the world together by facilitating easy communication and community development. Facebook allows its users to have free access to various apps, groups and receive their friends’ activities notifications. However, it is not free from various challenges i.e. various privacy and security issues always continue to exists. During the last quarter of 2018, 3 billion fake Facebook accounts were reported. Along with this, the trend of other social networking media such as snapchat, twitter is also increasing which has reduced the Facebook attractiveness. 

CATEGORIZATION OF FACEBOOK STAKEHOLDERS

We can categorize the stakeholders of Facebook into four categories – offensive, hold, defensive and swing stakeholders. The major focus of Facebook is on its users, employees, investors, competitors, and communities. 

HOLD STAKEHOLDERS: Hold stakeholders include stakeholders having low cooperative potential and competitive threat. Facebook Hold stakeholders include users and community groups. 

OFFENSIVE STAKEHOLDERS: Offensive stakeholders have a low competitive threat and high cooperation potential. Offensive stakeholders of Facebook include employees and investors. 

DEFENSIVE STAKEHOLDERS: Defensive stakeholders are stakeholders those have a high competitive threat and low cooperative potential. Advertisers, governments and competitors have these characteristics.

SWING STAKEHOLDERS: These include stakeholders with high competitive threat and high cooperative potential. Chairman, CEO and chairman technology officers of Facebook meet the characteristics of swing stakeholders.  

STAKEHOLDER VIEW OF FACEBOOK

Users: Facebook continually makes changes in its apps and networking site to gain a larger customer base. Improvements are also made to gain competitive advantage and handle various privacy issues. However, rising issues and other social networking coming up with new features obligates Facebook to work on areas that would help in gaining users satisfaction.

Community: Communities influence the activities of Facebook on a large scale. Facebook also provides support to communities through various developmental activities and support. However, it has been identified that Facebook gives minimal priority to the community. 

Employees: Facebook has high involvement in CSR activities and focuses on providing the best salary to the employees in the social networking industry.

Investors: Investors are a key part of the stakeholder group of Facebook which gets its funding from 24 investors. Facebook should provide a positive working environment for its investors. 

Advertisers: Facebook advertisers form a significant part of the stakeholder's group and CSR policy of Facebook also ensures providing effective advertising services. Advertisers are the chief source of income for the company. 

Governments: Government impose various policies, laws and regulations which the company has to comply with. Also, the government needs various data from Facebook to which Facebook responds effectively. 

Competitors: Major competitive partners of Facebook include snap chat, Instagram, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. The number of users of Facebook shows decreasing trend on account of the increasing trend of Instagram and snap chat. Thus, Facebook needs to develop strategies that will benefit the company in terms of competitive advantage. 

Chairman: Chairman has the high power of making changes to the company policies and strategies. He takes all the decision for the betterment and benefit for the organization as a whole.

Chief operating officer:  CEO of the company is responsible for making all the changes in the processes. 

Chief technology officer: CTO of Facebook has to ensure proper implementation of all new technologies so that Facebook users do not face any issue when operating their account.

FACEBOOK STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

Stakeholder analysis of Facebook will be done on the basis of four stakeholders i.e. users, competitors, employees, and advertisers. 

Users: Facebook is used for many purposes such as creating social networking account, building a professional profile, advertising, sharing photos, video calling, updating live status and also to log on to other sites which may require access to Facebook. Despite gaining trend of other networking apps and sites, Facebook has the largest number of users which helps in gaining a competitive edge over the competitors. 

Competitors: Various competitors of Facebook are there in the industry which are making various updates and innovations in their areas of operation, designing of sites, features in applications, etc. every competitor is making such changes to achieve competitive advantage over others. Although, people have different beliefs with regard to Facebook trending Snapchat and Instagram have reduced the trend of Facebook to some extent. 

Employees: Facebook pays its employees the highest in the industry and gives them various career opportunities by providing opportunities to learn constantly. However, it has been analyzed that there is the presence of a high level of racial discrimination and mistreatment of employees. 

Advertisers: Advertisers post various ads of various marketers, businesses, and products on the company’s website which the users share among their friends and family. Advertisers help in gaining mass reach for creating awareness among the large public. 

Thus, it has been found that Facebook has a team of effective employees and advertisers. Also, customers of Facebook have faith in its practices. It has a competitive edge as well over its competitors. A little involvement by Facebook in meeting its obligations towards employees, customers and community will help it to be the best in the industry. Steps must also be taken to handle all the privacy and security issues to build more trust in the minds of users.