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Stakeholders, Identity and Reputation 67

2. Targets should include issues that are relevant to stakeholders, and should be
linked to benchmarks and standards (at the industry and policy levels) wherever
possible.
3. Targets need to be progressive in bringing new aspirations and standards to bear
upon business operations instead of a regurgitating of existing practices that may
be seen as socially and ecologically viable.
4. Reporting needs to be an honest, transparent and full-scale self-assessment
instead of a polishing of performance data.
5. Performance data need to be rigorously assessed and verified by credible auditors
(accountants or consultants) wherever possible.

Up to this point, the discussion has been around the more general aspects of the
stakeholder management model.The concept of stake-holding was outlined, and the
discussion emphasized the interdependency between an organization and its stake-
holders and in particular the need for an organization to be found legitimate by all of
them.This stakeholder model provides the context within which organizations, and
particularly the senior managers and communications practitioners who work within
them,now work and manoeuvre.Important implications that follow from this model
are that:

• A corporate image needs to be actively projected to all stakeholder groups, so
that these groups upon which the organization is dependent accept and value the
organization and its operations as legitimate.The input–output model (Figure 3.1),
in comparison, never demanded organizations to readily profile themselves and
stand out on both financial and societal issues; nor did it require the approval of
parties other than customers and investors. Stakeholder management thus
requires organizations to think about their business and the profile that they want
to have with important stakeholder groups, and whether this profile is sufficient
to be accepted and favoured.The conceptual machinery that organizations have
at their disposal to address this issue involves the concepts of identity and repu-
tation, to which the chapter turns next.
• Stakeholder management emphasizes the need for both marketing and public
relations as ‘equal management partners’ for communicating with and building
relationships with all the stakeholders of an organization, and for a managerial
framework from where communication efforts can be balanced and coordinated. 22

3.3 Understanding identity and
corporate communications

The stakeholder model posits that the various stakeholders of the organization need
to be identified and they must be addressed for the stake that they hold. In practice,
this comes down to providing stakeholders with the type of information about the
company’s operations that they have an interest in. Financial investors and share-
holders, for instance, will need to be served with financial information or cues