Stakeholders at Starbucks. The Internal Stakeholders Include

¶ … stakeholders at Starbucks. The internal stakeholders include the senior management team, the shareholders, managers and employees, and the Board of Directors. Schultz works closely with all of these groups in order to manage the company. As the firm's inspirational leader and visionary, Schultz guides the senior management team and works closely with the Board, on which he sits. Through the Board, he deals with the shareholders. Overall, all of the internal stakeholders recognize that Schultz is the face of the company and is responsible for all aspects of the company. He has a high level of personal credibility and that helps when he speaks to the different internal stakeholders.

External stakeholder management is a little bit more challenging. There are a number of external stakeholder groups, including various governments, franchise owners, customers, suppliers and other interested groups that monitor the company for its environmental and labor policies. Some of these groups represent a significant challenge for Starbucks.

The external groups that the company works closely with are the suppliers and the franchise owners. The latter are critical, especially to the international expansion plans. The company uses contracts to ensure that the franchise owners' interests are aligned with those of the company. The arrangement with the suppliers is more or less the same. There are some differences, however, especially with the coffee farmers. Starbucks has at times in its past come under some criticism for the rates that farmers get paid for their beans. This has spurred Starbucks to engage with its critics, build stronger relationships with its key suppliers, improve the amount of fair trade coffee in its system and more. Schultz initially did not want to have policy dictated by external interest groups, but has taken a more proactive approach in the past decade or so with respect to engaging these groups and ensuring that Starbucks was not going to become the target of any serious campaigns against it.

With respect to shareholders, Starbucks knows that their motivations are relatively easy to address. They want a good return on their money, and since Schultz is one of the largest shareholders, he understands this as well as anybody else. On this level, there is good interaction between the shareholders and Schultz, bolstered by his personal credibility as the person most directly responsible for the shareholder wealth that does exist at the company. In addition, there are regular communications between the shareholders and the company through annual meetings and press releases. The largest shareholder groups will receive more personalized attention from the CEO, but the high level of trust that they place in Schultz makes such communications relatively smooth.