Marketing communication: principles and practice

partners not opposites. Public service is valued as well as material wealth.
Many aims are held in common and people work together to achieve them
instead of pursuing their own individual aims. The Labour government
M A N A G I N G W I T H S T A K E H O L D E R S
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contract with the people is to work as partners with all people of the nation
to rebuild a bond of trust so that democracy can flourish. 
The stakeholder society pivots on the concept of inclusion – the individual
is a member, a citizen, and a potential partner in a relationship with reciprocal
obligations as well as rights. A stakeholder economy goes hand in hand with
a stakeholder polity. Political reform is necessary. The (new) centre-left seek
a partnership between government and corporations, at a time when power
is shifting to big business. Perhaps that is the only way to have a hand in the
power of the future? Some have argued that a stakeholder society is merely
a reconciliation of the discipline of the free market with ‘supply-side’
socialism. Government then, through the law, protects the interests of those
stakeholders who cannot do it themselves. Government is less intrusive, but
civil order is retained. Perhaps we should consider the prospects for more of
a culture of a corporate governance which recognizes that employees and
customers, as well as shareholders, have a stake in an enterprise. Then we
would not so willingly allow owners to leverage financial gain by treating
people and their work as commodities to be traded for profit? 
Will Hutton sees stakeholding as a different political economy of
capitalism, with different assumptions based on a different value system –
social inclusion, membership, trust, cooperation, long-termism, equality of
opportunity, participation, active citizenship, rights and obligations. This is
in sharp contrast to the political right’s notions of opting-out, privatization,
the primacy of individual choice, maximization of shareholder value, and the
‘burden’ of welfare and social costs. Large industrial organizations were
bureaucracies who arbitrated between rival claims – a necessary function in
any industrial economy, whether market capitalist or market socialist.
Adoption of a stakeholder value system requires us to rethink the idea of a
company as a network of reciprocal claims between customers, shareholders,
employees, bankers, suppliers, and managers. 
Critics claim that we have yet to see a clear definition of the ‘stakeholder
society’ – they expect that it exists out there to be captured – merely the
rebirth of post-flower-power corporatism. Perhaps they might wish to help
to create a corporate community which truly distinguishes the negativity of
selfishness from the constructivity of individualism through the promotion
of a democracy which creates as well as presupposes shared values, giving
everybody a sense of shared rights and responsibilities. The consequences
of a quasi-democratic form of corporate governance could be staggering.
Resolution of the business–society conflict could create a more productive
form of free enterprise, better serving economic 
and
social needs.
Surely, we must see that this question is fundamentally one concerning
the nature of relationships in our society. Some critics have labelled Labour’s
vision as a return to a ‘communitarianism’. If this means cooperation and
communication, leading to accord, fellowship, and reciprocity, to supersede
conflict, theft, and insecurity, then count me in.
One final question remains. As the global village becomes a reality through
computer–telecommunications convergence, where does the corporate com-
munity reside? National borders are easily transcended by electronically