Stakeholder Engagement at Woolworths

This assignment explores the concept of stakeholder engagement within the context of Woolworths Limited, a prominent retail company. It delves into the information needs of three key stakeholders: customers, shareholders/investors, and suppliers. The analysis highlights how Woolworths interacts with these stakeholders to achieve its business objectives while considering ethical and sustainable practices. The assignment concludes by emphasizing the importance of stakeholder engagement for organizational success.

Running head: FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
Financial, sustainability and integrated reporting
Name of the university
Name of the student
Authors note

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FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
Introduction:
The report is prepared to discuss of three different stakeholders of organization. It deals
with demonstration of information required by each group of stakeholders and the reasons of
such information required by them. In this report, selected organization is Woolworths Limited.
Woolworths limited has always attempted to build stakeholder relationships and stakeholder engagement
that has been integral part of doing business. The stakeholder engagement framework has been developed
by setting up cross functional team and shifting to a more inclusive model (Ditlev-Simonsen &
Wenstøp, 2013). The three important stakeholder groups of the organization includes customers,
employees and shareholders or investors.
Discussion:
Customers- Woolworths engage with customers to understand their needs and growing revenue
by enhancing brand. The information needs for customers involve understanding their needs and
requirements as it is essential for providing them with right products at right time and getting exactly
what they are looking for in the specific stores. One of the most important part of organization to become
a customer oriented business is listening and understanding their needs. Customers seeks information
about services, products and all format strategies by ensuring that organization understand their utilities
and intent. They intend to provide organization with the new opportunities and enhancing the
segmentation model so that business comes up with needed products. Maintaining close contacts with
customers helps in satisfying their needs. Customers are able to share their feeling and thoughts by
several feedback methods used by marketers or business. Customers are regarded as the key driver for
decisions that is taken throughout the business (Lawrence & Weber, 2014). It can be explained with the
help of instance that customers might seek information about raw materials used in the manufacturing
process and usage of such materials would be affected by reaction of customers to products design.

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FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
Therefore, there are many reasons that is associated with requirement of information as customers want
organizations to develop products that would satisfy them.
Shareholders or investors- Investors and shareholders represents the owners of company as they
own a percentage of shares of organization. Shareholders seek information about profitability position of
organization as they are provider of funds. Information of total cash inflow and outflow, balance sheet
position depicting the assets and liabilities and information about income statement of company is sought
by investors. Profitability, efficiency, liquidity and solvency position of Woolworths would help investors
in undertaking correct financial decisions. This will help them to provide with informed perception about
organization so that positive investment environment is created. Such information helps in creating a
timeous, relevant and transparent communication so that investors and shareholders are provided with
through understanding of Woolworth’s performance and adopting strategy of going forward. Woolworths
provide shareholders with several financial statements in annual report depicting their financial position
(Rodrigue et al., 2013). The price of shares listed in stock market should be provided to them as it
would assist them in making long-term and short-term investments accordingly. Favorable financial
position helps in maintaining credibility position of organization and would generate favorable return to
them. Information about financial position of Woolworths is of utmost important to investors (Wolf,
2014). Such information is required by this particular group of investors for evaluating their investments
made in equity and gaining relevant and reliable data in the financial statement. It helps in gauging how
well earnings are generated by organization.
Suppliers- Suppliers are another important shareholders in organization such as Woolworths
Holding Limited. Development of fair and reliable relations with suppliers help in sourcing raw materials
for the products in proper and ethical way. Suppliers views the reputable position of organization and they
supply with innovative, new and standard products by delivering consistent quality. Suppliers seek
information about the raw materials are processed so that they are able to maintain and ensure
environmental and social responsibility across their supply chain. One of the pre requisite of suppliers is

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FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
adhering to business principles code. Demand of raw materials is determined by suppliers to provide them
with timely delivery of products. Suppliers also assist organization in solving sustainability issues by
extending the involvement in various sustainability program. Integration with the suppliers helps in
maximizing the bottom value impact and business value. Managing suppliers helps in optimizing and
helps in creating accountability and optimizing their performance. Suppliers’ relationship with
organization helps in limiting business, reputational and organizational risks (Yakimova et al., 2016).
Furthermore, information about efforts taken by organization to remain sustainable and socially
responsible helps suppliers in analyzing the sustainability position. They seek such information for
incorporating sustainability practice in the supply chain management.
Conclusion:
From the above analysis, it is concluded that suppliers, customers and shareholders are
relevant stakeholders of Woolworths limited. They seek various information form organization
and organization seeks information from them to bring changes in products or creating
innovation. Customers seeks information about products design, investors seeks information
regarding the profitability position of company and suppliers maintains their sustainability
position by evaluating the efforts of company concerning the same.

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FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
References list:
Brummette, J., & Zoch, L. M. (2016). How stakeholders’ personal values influence their value
expectations for legitimate organizations. Corporate Communications: An International
Journal, 21(3), 309-321.
Ditlev-Simonsen, C. D., & Wenstøp, F. (2013). How stakeholders view stakeholders as CSR
motivators. Social responsibility journal, 9(1), 137-147.
Lawrence, A. T., & Weber, J. (2014). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy.
Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

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FINANCIAL, SUSTAINABILITY AND INTEGRATED REPORTING
Rodrigue, M., Magnan, M., & Boulianne, E. (2013). Stakeholders’ influence on environmental
strategy and performance indicators: A managerial perspective. Management Accounting
Research, 24(4), 301-316.
Wolf, J. (2014). The relationship between sustainable supply chain management, stakeholder
pressure and corporate sustainability performance. Journal of business ethics, 119(3),
317-328.
Yakimova, R., Merrilees, B., & Miller, D. (2016). Engaging Internal Stakeholders: Revitalizing
Community Organizations Through Rebranding. In Looking Forward, Looking Back:
Drawing on the Past to Shape the Future of Marketing (pp. 764-771). Springer, Cham.