Report on Stakeholder Management and Engagement at Tesco PLC

This report critically analyzes stakeholder management and engagement at Tesco PLC, a major UK retailer. It begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction outlining the scope and objectives. A literature review explores stakeholder theory and cross-functional working. The discussion and analysis section examines Tesco's stakeholder matrix, evaluating the impact and support levels of employees, customers, shareholders, and the government. The report highlights the importance of cross-functional collaboration for innovation, conflict resolution, and employee engagement. The report also provides recommendations for improving stakeholder management and engagement, and it concludes with a summary of key findings. The report emphasizes the need for employee satisfaction and collaborative working environment. It discusses the impact of stakeholder on the organization.

LO1 CRITICALLY ANALYSE
APPROACHES TO STAKEHOLDER
MANAGEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT
LO2 EVALUATE CROSS
FUNCTIONAL WORKING TO
DELIVER POSITIVE RESULTS L

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The report is aimed to discuss different aspects of stakeholders. With this regard, Tesco
plc has been taken which is one of the biggest retail market giant. In this project firstly a
literature review was conducted where present knowledge has been gone through, then by using
different models' stakeholder analysis was made. It has been the finding of this report that there
is always strong need to pay severe attention to the employees in order to keep them satisfied.

Table of Contents.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................4
DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS...................................................................................................7
RECOMMENDATION.................................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Stakeholder management refers to the process of perpetuating the relationship with
individuals who influence the work, activity, project or programme within an organization. In
other words, it is the method to arrange, observe and refine the nexus with the stakeholders. The
objective of stakeholder management is to create positive relationship by administering
individual needs and expectations (Pedrini and Ferri, 2018). The report will critically analyse the
stakeholder matrix of Tesco Ltd which was established in 1919 and founded by Jack Cohen is a
UK's multinational groceries and general retailer being headquartered in London. Organization is
currently holding around 31% market share in UK retail sector. Tesco plc is one of the biggest
giant of retail market and having its multiple retail products to be offered. It is having more than
345000 colleagues who are serving the customers on regular basis.
It will identify various strategies to improve the stakeholder management and
engagement within an organization. The project will evaluate the cross-functional working which
helps to deliver the positive results of the company. Further, the case study will describe the
impact of collaborative working and administering tough discussion on the internal and external
stakeholders of an organization. The objective of entire discussion is to bring clarity of thought
when it comes to stakeholder analysis of Tesco plc. There will be a well articulated structure
would also be presenting depicting communication channel in the organization.
The report is aimed to discuss various aspects such as different models, theories of
stakeholders and their importance to the organization. With this regard, a broad literature review
would be made so can present their significance in comprehensive manner. A fully fledged
picture will be presented in order to bring better sense of understanding about how these
stakeholders are having their great impact on the organizational performance.
LITERATURE REVIEW
According to Adamian and et al., (2021) stakeholders can be defined as all those parties
or position holders who share their interests to an organization in either direct or indirect manner.
Employees, shareholders, managers, owners and the entire workforce are the examples of the
internal stakeholders whereas customers, community, society, financial institutions, private
creditors, government and the suppliers are the external stakeholders of the company which
directly affect the working of the company.

Sperry and Jetter, (2019) upheld the notion that for an organization determination of
suitable stakeholder model is essential to make itself thrive. There are number of models such as
Normative, Instrumental, Descriptive. It totally lies in the need and ability of an entity to adopt
the best model or approach in order to keep their stakeholders satisfied.
As per the view points of Dyson, (2020) Cross functional working can also be deciphered
as the functionality where a person work with the members besides its team. In the organizations
like TESCO plc who is giant of retail sector and getting operated with around 367321. So with
this regard, for the organization it is quite essential to bring collaborative working in attempt to
boost up its overall performance and effectiveness in the market.
The views hared by Grama-Vigouroux and et.al., (2020) Cross-functional collaboration
includes involvement of different members of different departments working together to gain the
common objective. Considering the case of Tesco Ltd, due this working the executive of sales
department could be easily coordinated with the warehouse staff which also helps to update the
stock in the warehouse. Because of cross-functional working various talent align together to
work on specific task resulting in creativity, multiple learning and effective communication.
Scott and et al., (2019) supported the views shared above and said that the quoted
company followed the collaborative working which provides various positive outcomes such as
encouraging unique ideas to flow, bridging the gap between different departments by inclusive
culture, ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of different departments & to nullify them,
develop the leadership skills by different management learning style, assist the employees to
maintain the balance of professional & personal life, getting healthy opposition leads come up
with an innovative idea, and providing a unique environment to better perform the working of
the quoted organization.
Along with the above suggested ideas Grama-Vigouroux and et.al., (2020) recommended
that there is further need of having a review mechanism which timely investigate the plan and its
application. It would aid to wipe out all cons and will assist to hike the overall performance. As
per the views of Adamian and et al., (2021) Collaborative working is a non hierarchical type of
working in which different stakeholders of the organization share their skills and creativity in
order to achieve common goals or objectives. A collaborative environment supports people at
different hierarchy by giving them a common platform Let's discuss impacts of collaborative
working.

Barney, (2018) believes that the importance of stakeholders to a business is immense, since they
are the parties who are ultimately behind all success so their role can not be eliminated. It is time
saving if all stakeholders are well addressed and are being managed effectively. For the
organization as big as Tesco, Time is considered as one of the most precious resources. With the
technical advancement in the Tesco plc, a central platform is created and such platforms are
always kept up to date with the technology and information of the organization like policies,
vision, mission, objectives, projects, goals, people book, departments, etc. this helps everyone
gets the best of resources without wasting time.
Lundene and Mohagheghi, (2018). Shared the idea that these are the stakeholders who
make organization to bring creativity in work. One of the advantages of stakeholders is that it
benefits almost every project with different perspectives. As so many people come onboard for a
project applying their efficiency and intelligence which results in improved performance of the
projects. Having different people on the same projects brings innovation to complete the task.
Brannen, Mughan and Moore, (2020) suggested that if there are stakeholders, and they
are well managed then it brings collaborative working in a business is to put everyone on the
same level of corporate. Here we try to blur the vertical hierarchy and pave the way for
horizontal system of management in the organization. Each individual is allowed to feel free in
voicing opinions, taking initiatives and giving ideas to achieve one common goal of the Tesco.
This way responsibilities are not burden but shared by the group and becomes a shared
responsibility.
when an employee builds bond with colleagues and have a comfortable place to work,
they are less inclined to leave the or switch the job. Atmosphere at Tesco is extremely friendly
and cooperative which is a benefit to the organization as it keeps employees have a healthy mind
set, and they are at peace with the work life and such practices are helpful for retaining talents in
the Tesco.
Fredriksson, (2020) said that better communication with stakeholders. A good
collaborative work place forms a better chain for the communication with stakeholders (internal
and external). It works to eradicate conflicts and paves way for conflict resolution. Looking at
all the above importance of conflict free environment it can be said that it's a good way of
working and Tesco has been benefiting from this. By such conflict resolution mitigation of perils

is possible. The another strategy is to identify the triggers includes in the different projects which
could be combat by mitigating or preventing the risk measures.
Stocker and et al., (2020) suggested that Mapping the interest of stakeholder is the very
first strategy to be followed is to examine the significant factors related to the project i.e.
expectation, needs, demographics, feedback. Tesco Ltd need to perform mapping of the internal
stakeholders which aids to investigate the resources. This strategy includes to set a degree or
range of stakeholders influence on the company. It is essential to determine the direct or indirect
influence of the stakeholders on the specific project. This could be measured on the scale of high,
medium or low taking into account the specific internal and external stakeholders.
DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
The approach of stakeholder management focus on the systematic technique of forming
strategic constituencies. Stakeholders are further distributed into internal and external who have
a great impact on the survival of an organization in the given industry (Sedmak, 2021). The
stakeholders management and engagement critically analysed on the basis of steps of the quoted
company which are as follows:
 Recognize stakeholders: The very first thing to do is to figure out the internal and
external stakeholders of the company. It is beneficial for the both the company and the
holders as in a critical situation there must be an established relationship which could
help to resolve the problem in a better manner (Byrne, 2019).
 Outline the stakes: Secondly, it shows the interest or claim of the stakeholders in the
organization which has a key role in the better performance of the company. The main
stake is of the customers, shareholders and employees of an organization (Rahman,
2022). Apart from these, there are further more groups who have interest in the
company for example, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by the Tesco Ltd is
being observed by the environmental groups, NGOs and NPO.
 Importance of stakes: The third step to critically analyse the stakeholder
management is through ascertain the significance of stake. Stakeholder qualities of
urgency, power and legitimacy affect the company's success and growth.
 Identify opportunities: Evaluating opportunities and threats due to the stakeholders'
presence to the organization. There might be a situation which create an opportunity
for the given company to expand.

 Evaluate responsibilities to stakeholders: The last step to analyse the stakeholder
management is by considering the responsibilities of the company in specific
reference to the stakeholders. The authority of the company are environmental, social,
financial, healthy environment, better working culture, quality service which they
need to provide to the stakeholders.
Stakeholders Matrix Analysis
STAKEHOLDERS IMPACT LEVEL SUPPORT LEVEL REASONS
Employees Moderate to high Should be provided
better support for
productive working.
The operation and
function of an
organization is
dependent on the
employees.
Customers High Important to provide
support to give better
experience.
The profitability and
revenue of the
company and survival
is dependent on the
king of the market.
Shareholders Low Possible to provide
neutral support as they
change from time-to-
time.
The equity of the
company is in regard
to the shareholders
which could be
changed.
Government Very high There is a need to be
provided extra support
to them because they
are the policy-makers.
The regulation of the
company is highly
dependent on the rules
framed by the
government for
smooth functioning of
the business.

Evaluation of cross functional working to extend positive outcomes:
In such giant organizations the need of cross functional working can not be denied. It is
needed to reach the apex level of productivity and efficiency. TESCO plc is having around 5000
stores and all the stores are having range of departments and teams. It would be brining positive
outcomes to the organization, since in the modern age of business such entities can not keep
themselves away form such ideas, so the benefits are as-
 Making teams innovative and insightful.
 Paving way for conflict resolution.
 Installation of collaborative culture in the organization.
 More engagement of employees while performing the functions.
 Brining comfortableness in the organization.
 Building good and helpful teams.
 Making employees ready to adopt new changes.
 Aligning with the principle of Flexibility and Multitasking (Brewer, Ashenbaum and
Blair, 2019)
At the same time cross functional working also comes up with number of jeopardies,
Which are to be taken into consideration in order to make decision with this regard.
Collaborative working helps to save time by the centralization of different documents and
resources on a unique platform which is accessible by everyone in the company. Further
employees avoid wasting time asking for or looking for information.
The quoted company should correlate the stakeholders list with the main trigger resulting
it with an alternative solution. Here is a need to identify the stakeholders willing to take the
opportunities which would help the company to grow and achieve success by grabbing the
opportunities.
Analysis of communication channels: Tesco is one of the biggest retail sector player and
having its widely disseminated stakeholders. With the regard, the responsibilities of setting up
favourable and barrier less communication channels become significant for the organization. The
entity is practising both formal and informal channels for communication.
For communicating with external stakeholders generally written channels are used, such
as Twitter, Facebook, application, or latter, Email etc. It is authentic and for official purpose it
serves the best. On the other hands, it also uses oral channels for like announcements and

proclamation etc. for internal or informal communication. When a group of people put their
brains together and gains understanding of task, communication becomes easy and simple. Such
environment makes every one approachable and easy to talk with. Working together to create a
difference is a tag line of Tesco and Tesco really believes in providing single platform where
communication becomes a forte for the company.
Managing conflicts with stakeholders: A stakeholder is a person or party which has an
interest in the organization and can affect or get affected by the operations of the business. An
organization is nothing without its stakeholders, it is built on the stakeholders. There are
basically two types of stakeholders, internal and external. Internal stakeholder are such as
owners, employees, managers and shareholders etc. and external stakeholders are such as
suppliers, creditors, government, trade union, customers etc. it is important for every
organization to have positive and supportive stakeholders who contribute towards the success of
the company. Keeping stakeholders informed about the various business and organizational
aspects is important for their cooperation.
It creates environment where they can make connections, build relationships, lookout for
each other and learn from each other. People feel more comfortable when they have relationship
at the workplace. This improves the work culture and environment at the workplace. Skill sets of
employee begin to blend together resulting into the more efficiency and it makes them learn
from each other. This improves the entire environment in the organization and ease the
professionalism.
RECOMMENDATION
Tesco faces such problems with the stakeholders as shareholders expects increased return
on investments but company has to pay a huge salary to retain the talents and staffs, if company
pay cuts the employees, it will have hard time with staff as they will be disappointed. Therefore,
it is important for Tesco to make a balance between the various stakeholders to keep everyone
satisfied and understand the Tesco's perspective. Another such thing is Tesco plc has faced many
feedbacks from its stakeholder to have competitive stand in the market and Tesco plc dealt with
this in an outstanding way by developing their edge accordingly. Communication is the key to
have difficult conversation with the stakeholders. Keeping clarity and transparency in working of
the organization and having various established channels of communication with the
stakeholders is really important. The organization is widely working in around 14 nations so the

fact can not be rejected that it is having widely prevailing competitors too. At the same time,
with the progress of time the organization would be experiencing hyper competition so it is
recommended to address all issues even the minute problems which are present there so can help
itself to mitigate all perils and can make its stakeholders satisfied. The communication of the
organization is quite good yet now other organizations such as M&S, Sainsbury who are sharing
significant market are making intensive efforts to hike their uproar. With this regard, it is
suggested to improve the communication channels.
The steps can be taken for difficult conversation with the stakeholders is to identify them
closely and know their interest in the organization, try to know what they are seeking from the
organization, indulge in conversation with them and try to know their expectations and where
company is lagging behind. This will bring you to stay close to the root cause of the problem so
you can resolve the same.
Company must continuously take feedbacks from the employees to know their point of
view and opinion. It is important to focus on meetings and channels of communication where
stakeholders can be addressed. Whenever company comes up with new plans, policies, offers
and discounts, respective stakeholders should be informed primarily as their understanding and
cooperation is must in smooth functioning of the organization. Hence, it can be said that
stakeholders are key groups of a company and making them a priority is important for the growth
of the organization.
CONCLUSION
The report has been summarized by describing the meaning of stakeholder management
which had a positive and negative impact on the performance of the Tesco Ltd. It was able to
critically analysed the stakeholder management and engagement approach with the help of
stakeholder matrix resulting in evaluating the role of employees, consumers and shareholders to
the quoted organization. The report discussed the effective strategies to improve the stakeholder
management such as by mapping the key factors, stakeholders influence, finding triggers &
mitigate them and lastly focus on the opportunities to leverage the positives of stakeholders. The
case study was able to identified and evaluated the cross-functional working resulting in the
positive outcomes. Lastly, the research has been summarized and analysed the impact of
collaborative working and administering problems of the employees, customers, government and
shareholders.

At the end of the report it is also recommended to the organization to bring some better
practices in order to make its communication more affective and barrier less. The organization is
operating its business of markets so it becomes its prime duty to work on such notions. Due to
wider prevalence the organization generally gets mammoth sized feedbacks so there is strong
recommendation for Tesco plc to work on its feedback utilization policy. It may escalate its
ability of using these feedbacks. The organization is suggested to bring all those feedbacks into
contemplation which are having potential to make it thrive. At the same time the competitors of
the entity are one of the biggest factor so with this regard it may go for hyper strategies in order
to reduce their negative impacts on the performance of business. As it is known that the
organization is having a wide number of employees who are working with it and are behind
satisfaction of customers. With this regard it is recommended to keep them satisfied at any cost
and working on their productivity factor.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Adamian, S. H. and et.al., 2021. Building a psychologically safe and collaborative working
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a stakeholder perspective. Strategic Management Journal. 39(13). pp.3305-3325.
Brannen, M. Y., Mughan, T. and Moore, F., 2020. The creative use of insider ethnography as a
means for organizational self investigation: The “Essence of Tesco” project. In The
Routledge companion to anthropology and business (pp. 132-154). Routledge.
Brewer, B., Ashenbaum, B. and Blair, C. W., 2019. Cross‐Functional Influence and the Supplier
Selection Decision in Competitive Environments: Who Makes the Call?. Journal of
Business Logistics. 40(2). pp.105-125.
Byrne, M., 2019. Increasing the impact of behavior change intervention research: Is there a role
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teams mature. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Agile Software
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Pedrini, M. and Ferri, L. M., 2018. Stakeholder management: a systematic literature
review. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society. 19(1).
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Scott, A. and et.al., 2019. This isn't the glue factory: Tesco's horse meat scandal-An application
of Benoit's (1997) Image Repair Theory.
Sperry, R. C. and Jetter, A. J., 2019. A systems approach to project stakeholder management:
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Stocker, F. and et.al., 2020. Stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting: a classification
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Online references
Rahman, M., 2022. Stakeholders of Tesco (An analysis of Tesco’s stakeholders)[Online].
Available through <https://howandwhat.net/stakeholders-of-tesco-an-analysis-of-tescos-
stakeholders/>
Sedmak, J., 2021. What is Stakeholder Engagement, and Why is it Important for Strategic
Planning? [Online]. Available through <https://www.smestrategy.net/blog/stakeholder-
engagement-management-for-strategic-planning>
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