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Communications Strategy 109

can spend a lot of money (utilitarian), or those who can command the attention
of the news media (symbolic). However, dormant stakeholders have little or no
interaction with the firm, but because of their potential to acquire a second
attribute (urgency or legitimacy), management should remain cognizant of such
stakeholders.
2. Discretionary stakeholders: those who possess legitimate claims but have no
power to influence the firm, and no urgent claims. Recipients of corporate charity,
for instance, fall within this group.
3. Demanding stakeholders: those who have urgent claims, but neither the power
nor legitimacy to enforce them. These groups can therefore be bothersome but do
not warrant serious management attention. That is, where stakeholders are unable
or unwilling to acquire either the power or the legitimacy necessary to move their
claim into a more salient status, the ‘noise’ of urgency is insufficient to project a
stakeholder claim beyond latency. For example, a lone millenarian picketer who
marches outside corporate headquarters with a sign that says, ‘The end of the
world is coming! Acme chemical is the cause!’ might be extremely irritating to
Acme’s managers, but the claims of the picketer remain largely unconsidered.

Three further groups are considered and classified as expectant stakeholders;
groups with two attributes present:

4. Dominant stakeholders: those who have both powerful and legitimate claims;
hence their influence is assured. Examples include the employees, customers,
owners and significant creditors of the organization.
5. Dangerous stakeholders: those who have power and urgent claims, but lack
legitimacy. They are seen as dangerous as they may resort to coercion and even
violence. Examples of unlawful, yet common, attempts at using coercive means
to advance stakeholder claims (which may or may not be legitimate) include
wildcat strikes, employee sabotage and terrorism. Other examples of stakeholders
using coercive tactics include environmentalists spiking trees in areas to be
logged and religious or political terrorists using bombings, shootings or kidnap-
pings to call attention to their claims.
6. Dependent stakeholders: those that lack power, but who have urgent, legitimate
claims. They rely on others for the power to carry out their will – perhaps through
the advocacy of other stakeholders. Local residents of a community in which a
plant of a large corporation is based, for instance, often need to rely on lobby
groups or some other form of political representation to have their concerns
voiced.
The seventh and final type of stakeholders group that can be identified is:

7. Definitive stakeholders: those who have legitimacy, power and urgency. In other
words, definitive stakeholders are powerful and legitimate stakeholders who by
definition will already be a member of the firm’s dominant coalition. When the
claim of a definitive stakeholder is urgent, managers have a clear mandate to give
priority and attention to it. Stockholders, for example, who are normally classi-
fied as dominant stakeholders, can become active when they feel that their legit-
imate interests are not being served by the managers of the company in which
they hold stock and then effectively act as definitive stakeholders. That is, as the