Stakeholder Relations Matter: You Need to Count on Them – But it's Hard to Count Them
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12237 |
| Author | Nadine‐Lan Hönighaus,Thorsten Pinkepank |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
Stakeholder Relations Matter: You Need to
Count on Them –But it’s Hard to Count
Them
Nadine-Lan H€
onighaus and Thorsten Pinkepank
BASF SE
1. Why stakeholder relations matter
Identifying your stakeholders
Before elaborating on stakeholder engagement a com-
pany needs to know who its stakeholders are. BASF as
the world’s leading chemical company with products
going into all kinds of industries; 112,000 employees
worldwide, numerous suppliers, customers and share-
holders have a direct or indirect relation to almost
everybody. Nevertheless, a clear picture of a company’s
relevant stakeholders in business, government and civil
society is essential for effective stakeholder engagement.
But a company’s set of relevant stakeholders will change
over time, some might evolve unexpectedly. Rather than
relying on inflexible stakeholder mapping tools it might
be more appropriate to have skilled people and organi-
zational structures in place for an ongoing stakeholder
analysis and engagement.
Why to engage with your stakeholders
BASF has always interacted with its stakeholders but in
addition to rather ‘classical’forms of stakeholder interac-
tion that are still essential, new approaches have devel-
oped over time. Engagement with stakeholders can
improve a company’s decision making and performance
since it helps to get a broader view of your market than
economic figures can provide. Stakeholders can give a
company an insight into their perspectives on current
and emerging issues, into how they perceive the com-
pany and how they consider a company’s impact.
But there are more reasons why stakeholder engage-
ment is important: we face societal changes like the
erosion of traditional opinion and decision making mech-
anisms. Societies are more and more characterized by
discourse and at the same time systemic challenges like
climate change, cultural disintegration or financial crises.
Aren’t we beyond the point where a couple of countries
can realize something like a Bretton Woods system
within less than a month? Another example: the UN’s
path to new Sustainable Development Goals in 2015
requires an elaborated global process of multi-stake-
holder consultations, academic input and intergovern-
mental negotiations and is still very ambitious if it is to
be finalized within the course of three years.
There is evidence that in a world like this it is simply
not possible for a single institution or company to act on
its own. The key to address this is to partner, consult,
involve and engage with stakeholders. This does not
mean delegating decision making to external people, it
is still a company’s management that decides on its busi-
ness strategy. But this strategy has a higher likeliness to
meet the market’s needs and succeed if it is based on a
participatory approach that also includes stakeholders’
views. BASF has given a clear answer to the ‘why-ques-
tion’: we have identified ‘responsible relations’as one of
the material aspects to our organization.
2. Different forms of stakeholder engagement
at BASF
BASF has various forms of stakeholder engagement in
place. Our stakeholder engagement comprises for exam-
ple, site and local community related form like our com-
munity advisory panels at sites worldwide –or also
classic open house days and site visits. On the business
side, BASF is a founding member of Together for Sustain-
ability, an initiative in which leading chemical companies
have joined forces to support sustainability in the supply
chain and standardize supplier assessment methods. On
an international level, BASF takes an active part in the
United Nations (UN) Global Compact: BASF’s Chairman of
the Board of Executive Directors is a member of the UN
Global Compact Board, and BASF is an active member in
many local networks. We use the internet and social
media for stakeholder exchange on for example new
technologies as our information and exchange platform
on nanotechnology demonstrates.
1
Different formats of
stakeholder engagement serve different purposes: with
local initiatives you are close to the communities adja-
cent to your sites and international initiatives like the UN
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2015) 6:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12237
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 4 . November 2015
486
Practitioners’ Special Section
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