Hi my name is Margie Lutvey.I am here today to provide recommendations and strategies for your business, Monsanto, through identifying the key problems and issues and provide you with a stakeholder management strategy that I find would be most effective for you and your organization. I will mainly be discussing the ethical dilemmas of sustainability faced by your company and the potential impacts its can have on you stakeholders.

Stakeholders are any group or individual who can affect or is affected by a firms objectives. Firms and organisations are better able to achieve their strategic objectives if they engage with their stakeholders. With engaging with stakeholders it is also a building block for better decision-making and minimizing negative impacts on third parties and doing the right thing. Stakeholders don’t have to be equity shareholders. They can also be your employees, communities, pretty much anyone who has a stake in your company’s success and incentive for your products to succeed. They can be business partners, who rely on your success to keep the supply chain going. Therefore it is important to engage stakeholders in business activity as they have the power to hold a viable “stake” in your company. It is important to engage with stakeholders to keep a good relationship with them. Stakeholders can have a negative and or a positive effect on the organization. A positive attitude makes it easier for the organization such as Monsanto to create potential sponsors, where as a negative attitude can create potential blockers.

Monsanto is one of the world’s largest industrial agriculture businesses. For much of its history, Monsanto has dealt in controversial products from artificial sweeteners to pesticides and herbicides. One of the more recent additions to Monsanto’s product portfolio has been genetically modified seeds. These Genetically modified products, however, have stirred up controversy everywhere they are distributed, and Monsanto, being a huge multinational corporation and a major producer, is at the center of attention. However, another ethical dilemma that has great potential to affect the company negatively is Monsanto’s operations towards the safety precautions and treatment of their employees. This problem is caused by the pressure of management on employees, to eliminate or skip the safety precautions standard procedure of filling out a checklist before beginning operation. Management have put this strain on employees to cut out the safety requirements due to the company not meeting there quote.

Business ethics considers the ethical relationship between business, consumer and businesses, employees and business and the environment. An ethical dilemma occurs when you have a moral obligation to abide by two different courses of action. In this case the two conflicting issues are: meeting their production quota or meet safety demands. Another example within Monsanto’s operations would be reporting unethical wrongdoing by George who is engaged in some form of corporate fraud. Many employees in this situation would be conflicted in their fear of losing their jobs, making it difficult for them to meet obligations to provide for their families. However, by not reporting the wrongdoing, they put other stakeholders in jeopardy, which is what is present in Monsanto’s operations. If the employees don’t abide by what George, the assistant GM, is saying they may feel they will lose their job.

Most of us wake up every day, get dressed, and head off to work. While commuting in, we never worry about getting hurt or dying on the job. That’s because we believe our office, store, or plant is safe. But the appearance of safety is often an illusion. Over the last year, workplace accidents have claimed countless employees. A factory fire in Bangladesh extinguished 111 lives. Another one in Pakistan left 262 dead. None of these workers expected to die on the job, but die they did. How did we get here? It is evident, safety experts, federal and state regulators lack sufficient resources to enforce safety regulations. And companies are under-investing in worker-safety programs in order to maximize their profits. This was especially made noticeable by George the Assistant GMS remark ‘ I realize there are potential risks, but we can’t afford to hire additional workers right now. If we can just meet this output, it’ll increase our business tenfold.’

Different issues affect different stakeholders differently therefore it is important to identify and engage with the organizations stakeholders differently. The Stakeholder salience typology has been used to identify the relevant stakeholders. This model helps to identify Monsanto’s stakeholders by using three parameters to categorize stakeholders: Power, Legitimacy and Urgency. This three-dimensional view of project stakeholder’s needs and expectations from a project can help managers narrow down the critical stakeholders. This model allows organizations to identify their flaws and how it is important to balance the three parameters.

Monsanto’s primary stakeholders are employees, consumers, investors, governments and shareholders. These stakeholders are necessary for the organizations survival. Therefore it is vital to attain a good and strong relationship with them. Whereas, the secondary stakeholders, not so essential for the organizations survival, are scientists, research institutes and media.

It is evident with Monsanto’s ethical issue of safety, that the primary stakeholders, employees, are being affected. In order to have happy employee stakeholders, they should not feel intimidated by management. Instead, there should be openness between employers and employees. Monsanto should allow and make all employees feel less intimidated to be empowered to report problems and issues. With a better relationship between employees and employers at Monsanto, the company will be able to quickly address this issue and save themselves future lawsuits and customer injuries. This provides an ethical environment, and in turn, makes employees feel that their ideas and opinions are valuable.

Employees are one of the most important primary stakeholders in an organization. An employee contributes labor and/or expertise to an organization, and in many cases they are the connecting tissue between the products or services being provided and the customer. Therefore, Monsanto needs to take particular caution with how they have been treating their employees. Monsanto needs to make it essential to fill out the safety precautions. This will ensure workplace safety and will also keep employees happy.

Customers represent another key stakeholder group. Many corporate leaders consider their primary responsibilities to be not only to create financial value for the shareholders, but to meet the needs of their customers. High levels of customer satisfaction, of course, are likely to lead to positive business outcomes: high levels of customer satisfaction can lead to higher sales and profit margins, profits that can be re-invested in the company.

To prevent workplace accidents and illnesses, companies must stop viewing safety as a compliance issue and start treating it as an ethical or moral issue. In other words, keeping your employees safe isn’t just about fending off OSHA; it’s about upholding your obligations as an ethical employer. Monsanto needs to adopt the developing a stakeholder management strategy to ensure that they can respond to ethical dilemmas more efficiently and effectively. Due to the lack of safety measures, it is evident that employees feel they are not important. Therefore, Monsanto especially needs to look into stakeholder type 1 and 4, the supportive stakeholder and the mixed blessing stakeholder. The supportive stakeholder will allow employees to feel more informed about decisions and also make them feel like they can engage more with their employers about potential problems, eliminating the risk of unhappy employees. The blessing stakeholders allows for a more proactive engagement with the relevant stakeholders.

Another crucial recommendation is that Monsanto should engage with their stakeholders more. By engaging more with their stakeholders, they are developing their relationship. Building and maintaining a strong relationship will positively help Monsanto’s operations by being able to react to situations proactively and will also contribute to their ongoing success. Strong relationships with stakeholders shows that the organization is engaging with their stakeholders, this helps to address any negativity present as Monsanto is not viewed as hiding something.