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108 Corporate Communications in Practice

stakeholder mapping exercise) and the variety of attributes (e.g.financial performance,
community involvement, employee treatment, product quality, environmental
performance, and so on) by which stakeholders evaluate and rate an organization.
The outcomes of such reputation research may be compared to a target or benchmark
that the company has set for itself in terms of how it wants to be known and appre-
ciated by key stakeholder groups.

Box 4.2 Management brief: stakeholder mapping

Once stakeholders have been identified and drawn into a stakeholder map, they can
be further classified and prioritized according to the presence or absence of three key
attributes: power (the power of the stakeholder group upon an organization), legit-
imacy (the legitimacy of the claim laid upon the organization by the stakeholder
group) and urgency (the degree to which stakeholder claims call for immediate
action). Together, these three attributes form seven different types of stakeholders,
as shown in the figure below.

POWER LEGITIMACY

Dominant
stakeholder
Dormant Discretionary
stakeholder stakeholder
Definitive
stakeholder

Dangerous Dependent
stakeholder stakeholder
Non-stakeholder

Demanding
stakeholder
URGENCY

The three stakeholders groups on the outer sides of the figure are classified as latent
stakeholders groups – as groups possessing only one attribute:

1. Dormant stakeholders: those who have the power to impose their will on others,
but because they do not have a legitimate relationship or urgent claim, their
power remains dormant. Examples of dormant stakeholders are plentiful. For
instance, power is held by those who have a loaded gun (coercive), those who