Stakeholders: do you have a voice?

This GCSE business studies lesson will give students a practical understanding of the interests of different stakeholder groups. If a local issue is used, it will help students to understand the varying interests of different groups in community, business and economic issues.

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

* identify the main stakeholders in an organisation

* discuss areas of conflict between different stakeholders

* consider decisions from different stakeholders' points of view.

Lesson preparation

You will need some articlesfrom your local newspaper on issuesthat are causing concern for people in the community. These articles could be about:

* access to a public service

* an important public service closing down

* yet another charity shop on the high street

* parking charges

* a new superstore being proposed for the area

* a new housing development

* a business that is closing down.

Try to choose articles on issues that may affect members of the group or their families. Encourage groups to select a local issue for themselves. Alternatively, you could plan the lesson around the articleson page 15.

Lesson plan

1 Organise students into groups of four or five and provide fhem wifh newspaper articles on a selected issue. (You could give fhe students a choice, and ask them to pick an issue before dividing info groups.)

2 Ask students to produce a list of the different groups of people that will be affected by the issue reported in the article(s). Allow 10 minutes.

3 Using the board or a flip chart, fake feedback. List the groups affected by the issue by building up a spider diagram (leaving the centre blank at this stage). Discussion may be required fo draw our any key groups that students have not come up with in their lists.

4 Introduce the term "stakeholders". Add this term to the centre of the spider diagram and discuss a possible definition of the term.

5 Distribute aset of the student sheets on page 17 to each group. Allow 10 minutes for students to read through and complete the set task.

6 Take feedback and discuss possible areas of conflict between stakeholders. For example, if a public service is being cut, there might be a conflict between the government's need to cut costs and the employees' desire to keep their jobs.

7 Make each group represent a different stakeholder - for example, one group may be the community, another the government, etc. Explain that the students are to role play a public meeting called to discuss the issue they have been considering. Each group has to represent the views of its stakeholder group. Allow students 10 minutes to prepare their case.

8 Chair (or select a student to chair) a meeting at which stakeholder groups put forward their views in turn.

9 As a plenary, revisit the learning objectives. Check that students can identify different stakeholders and understand the ways in which the activities of businesses and organisations affect different groups.

10 A possible follow-up activity would be to write a letter to the newspaper, taking the role of one of the stakeholder groups and putting their point of view.

Carol Sumner is head of e-learning at Central Technology College in Grantham. Glynis Prater is national 14-19 partnership co-ordinator at the SSAT.

Copyright Economics and Business Education Association Summer 2007
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