Teacher Hints and Strategies

This case study could be used to examine the importance of stakeholder engagement for an organisation. This could mean undertaking group work where students look at different stakeholder groups and the importance of maintaining positive relationships with these. For example, groups could focus on different areas such as community engagement, customer or client relations, media relations, government relations, shareholder communications and human resources.

The class could work on different stakeholder groups for one organisation and then discuss together the importance of balancing all of these components. Alternatively, they could choose one stakeholder group and an organisation of their choice.

Students could present an analysis of their particular stakeholder group’s relations and look at its current state, history and how the relationships could be improved.

From this, students could then go away and either as a group or as an individual project, prepare a stakeholder relationship plan for the next year.

Alternatively, students can compare and contrast one area of stakeholder engagement and look at positive and negative examples across a variety of organisations and discuss how positive stakeholder engagement, including employee engagement, can give an organisation a competitive edge.