Extended Research on Facebook Stakeholders

The assignment content focuses on the importance of stakeholders in making Facebook successful. The stakeholder theory is applied to analyze the internal and external stakeholders of Facebook, including employees, founders, investors, shareholders, customers, and competitors. Four generic stakeholder strategies are identified: offensive, defensive, swing, and hold. Each strategy is tailored to a specific type of stakeholder, such as technical experts, users, competitors, and shareholders. The analysis also explores the potential threats and cooperative behaviors of each stakeholder group. Overall, the study highlights the significance of understanding and managing stakeholders effectively in order to achieve organizational success.

DYNAMIC STRATEGY AND DỈSRUPTIVE INNOVATION
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Executive summary
The purpose of the paper is to analyze the stakeholders of Facebook which is one of the known
and most used social media in the world. Facebook Inc. is one of the most important American
social media. The mission and vision of the company is to give the community the power to
build a society. The brand has also faced various types of trends over the years. The stakeholders
of Facebook are founder of the company, co-founder, investor, shareholders, employees,
competitors, society, customers and marketers. The behaviour and tendency of these stakeholders
has been analysed using Generic strategy model and behaviour theory. This has helped to show
the major stakeholders of the business and the way they become a competitive threat and
cooperate in the tasks done by the brand.

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Table of Contents
Introduction to Facebook.................................................................................................................3
Brief introduction to the company...............................................................................................3
Direction of the company............................................................................................................3
Recent developments...................................................................................................................3
Challenges....................................................................................................................................4
Identify stakeholders of Facebook...................................................................................................4
Importance of Stakeholders.........................................................................................................5
Extended Research on Facebook Stakeholders...........................................................................5
Stakeholder categorization & Stakeholder analysis........................................................................6
Four Stakeholder Analysis...........................................................................................................6
Behaviour Analysis......................................................................................................................7
Motives........................................................................................................................................7
Coalitions.....................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction to Facebook
Brief introduction to the company
Facebook Inc. is one of the most important American social media and social networking
company that has helped in giving a platform to the people to interact with other all around the
world. The founder of the company is Mark Zuckerberg and presently has 360 million
customers. It is now considered as one of the BIG FOUR companies along with Amazon, Apple
and Google. The company is seen to offer various services to the customers from communicating
to updating their daily activities (Kirschner and Karpinski 2010). It has also become a famous
marketing sites for online marketing. The service can be availed in various devices using internet
connectivity.
Direction of the company
Mission and Vision Statement
The mission and vision of the company is to give the community the power to build a society and
help in bringing people closer to each other. The vision of Facebook is to make the world small
where everyone can connect to each other (Thestreet 2019).
The value of Facebook is to focus on impact, move fast, be bold, be open and enhance social
value.
Recent developments
The recent trends seen in Facebook from 2015 to 2018 are wide and include activities like:
 2015 saw development of more than 40 million small business pages in Facebook
 Al research opens in Paris for Facebook in 2015
 Facebook launches various new reactions in 2016

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 In 2016 July over 1 billion users of messenger got added in the site every month
 In October 2016 Facebook launches its own Marketplace to interact sellers and buyers
 In 2018 Facebook was sued by the stakeholders after the stock plummet
 2018 also saw another trend that is Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandburg testifies
before congress (Thestreet 2019).
Challenges
Some of the recent challenges faced by Facebook includes:
 The increase misinformation from election
 Strengthening and increasing the privacy of people’s information
 Challenges of prioritizing safety and well being
 Challenges faced from the kinds of advertisements and increase transparency
 Seeking effective regulation (Investor 2019)
Identify stakeholders of Facebook
Facebook has many stakeholders affecting its organization in some way or the other such as
founder of the company, co-founder, investor, shareholders, employees, competitors, society,
customers and marketers (Facebook 2019).

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Importance of Stakeholders
All the stakeholders are important to the business in some way or the other and forming an
improved structure of the organization. The founder and co-founder of the company is important
in bringing the actual business idea into live. Further, investors are important because they help
in bringing the ideas into action by supporting Facebook financially. The employees, managers
and other internal stakeholders are the one that helps in forming strategies, manages everyday
tasks and help in making Facebook protected and safe including technical employees
(Šmakalova 2012). External stakeholders like society, customers and marketers are important
because it helps in making the initiatives of Facebook successful and is the major factor for the
success Facebook has achieved.

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Extended Research on Facebook Stakeholders
The stakeholder theory helps in showing the organizational management and business ethics that
results in various businesses impacts such as employees, suppliers, communities and others.
Among the internal and external stakeholders some acts like input to the firm while others act
like output to the firm. Among them the employees, founders, co-founder, investors,
shareholders all acts an output to Facebook because they are responsible for offering varied
service of Facebook such as privacy, chatting, marketing and others. Further, the customers,
society and others acts like input to Facebook by increasing their recognition, number of users
and revenue (Šmakalova 2012). Further, the internal and external stakeholders are responsible
for creating perceived recognition for the organization.
Stakeholder categorization & Stakeholder analysis
Four Stakeholder Analysis
The four categories of stakeholders of Facebook that fall under the four categories of Generic
Stakeholder strategy are technical employees of the company, users, competitors and
shareholders. Each of them falls under one category of the strategic model.
Offensive Strategies- this factor shows the ability and potential of some of the stakeholders for
being highly cooperative and offer low competitive threat. Among all the stakeholders of
Facebook the technical employees fall under this category because they have low competitive
threat on Facebook and high cooperative potential to complete operations in timely manner
(Šmakalova 2012). The company should use offensive strategy and work in cooperation with this
stakeholder.

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Defensive strategies- this strategy is used for stakeholders that has low cooperation and high
threat. Competitors fall in this category as Facebook has many social media as competitors.
Facebook should keep this group as friends and not enemies even though they get very less
benefit from them.
Swing strategies- this strategy is adopted when the stakeholders has potential of high cooperation
and competitive threat. Users of the organization falls under swing category because it is seen
that they have high potential to offer competitive threat and cooperation in making Facebook
either successful or a failure. Facebook should work in close with this stakeholder and use swing
strategy.
Hold strategies- this last strategy is used when the stakeholders has low potential for threat and
cooperation. Shareholders are the stakeholder that fall under this category because they have less
threat to Facebook due to such strong financial status of the brand and does not perform anything
in the business (Šmakalova 2012). They are the one that only analyse the performance of the
business and maintain their position. Facebook should keep this stakeholder updated as poor
performance might increase their potential threat.
Behaviour Analysis
These four stakeholders has different level of cooperative potential, competitive threat and actual
behaviour status in the organization.
Potential of threat- potential of threat is the least from the shareholder of the business because
there is very less chances shareholders will leave Facebook looking at the financial condition the
brand holds. Further, the threat is low from the technical experts of Facebook because they are
efficiently paid by the company and has less chances to leave the company. High threat is felt

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from users and competitors because they have high chances of impacting the position of the
company.
Potential of cooperation- cooperation is seen most from the technical experts because they help
in performing maximum updates and technical glitch of Facebook. The users also offers high
potential of cooperation to Facebook by supporting the updates and help making new efforts
successful (Kim et al. 2014). The least amount of cooperative behaviour is seen from
shareholders and competitors.
Actual behaviour- in actual behaviour it is seen that shareholders also offers some amount of
cooperation to the business that is Facebook by offering them different suggestions and growth
potentials.
Motives
Users- the objective of this stakeholder is to help bring the idea of company into action. The
stakeholders of users are their income source, the device they use to connect to Facebook and the
company itself. They belief that they have the potential to either make Facebook successful or be
a part of their failure.
Technical experts- the objective of this stakeholder is to offer support to Facebook in meeting
their plans and operational needs. Their stakeholders are the technology partners, the technical
instruments and others. They belief in making the best out of their efforts and job.
Competitors- objective is to create competitive pressure to Facebook and move above them in
the market. The stakeholders of competitors are similar like Facebook because they are other big
social media companies (Kim et al. 2014). They belief in keeping themselves above Facebook
and attract the users of Facebook.

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Shareholders- their objective is to gain from the investment they have made in Facebook.
Shareholders of shareholders is Facebook as well as other social media company. They belief to
earn maximum return from their investment.
Coalitions
Coalition helps in analysing the partnership that the stakeholders form to gain maximum from
the company:
 Users form coalition with other users being a stakeholder of Facebook
 Shareholders will form voting coalitions with the objective to discipline the incumbent
management
 Competitors forms coalition with other competitors in the market
 Technical experts form coalition with the management
Conclusion
From the above analysis it is can be concluded that Facebook maintains a strong connection with
their stakeholders that has the capability to act as a competitive threat to the business and
sometimes positively contribute in their growth. Further, the position of the brand in the market
is because of the efforts of the stakeholders including both internal and external stakeholder of
the business. Moreover, the decisions taken by the stakeholders are impacted by their own
stakeholders and this chain effect is seen to impact Facebook in a complex way. This has been
seen through the use of generic stakeholder strategies.

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References
Facebook (2019). Newsclip Media Monitoring. [online] Facebook.com. Available at:
https://www.facebook.com/newsclipmediamonitoring/posts/internal-and-external-stakeholders-
and-their-associations-can-influence-the-perc/1021353191251699/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].
Investor (2019). FAQs. [online] Facebook.com. Available at:
https://investor.fb.com/resources/default.aspx [Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].
Kirschner, P.A. and Karpinski, A.C., 2010. Facebook® and academic performance. Computers
in human behavior, 26(6), pp.1237-1245.
Kim, S., Kim, S.Y. and Hoon Sung, K., 2014. Fortune 100 companies’ Facebook strategies:
Corporate ability versus social responsibility. Journal of communication management, 18(4),
pp.343-362.
Šmakalova, P., 2012. Generic Stakeholder Strategy. Economics and Management, 17(2), pp.659-
663.
Thestreet (2019). History of Facebook: Facts and What's Happening in 2018. [online]
Facebook.com. Available at: https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-facebook-
14740346 [Accessed 10 Aug. 2019].