A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in what a business does or an influence upon the business. BT has many stakeholders, for example, internally there are employees and externally there are suppliers and the government. All stakeholders have an interest in the business so they therefore have an influence in BT in one form or another. Within BT there are many different stakeholders that work together. For example employees may communicate with directors and managers. However, not all of these stakeholders work together which can lead to conflict of interest which I will discuss later on.
One of the most influential stakeholders of BT is its Director, Sir Michael Rake. BT’s director would be directly involved in the day to day running of the business as well as making executive decisions. An example of this could be things like the purchase of raw materials and direct contact with the directors of their suppliers to carry out negotiations and contracts. Also the director of BT would make critical decisions for the business such as launching new products lines, or adding new products to the range of products that they already have. I researched an example of this, and discovered that BT already provided broadband connections to millions but in 2010, BT launched superfast 'infinity' broadband that is five times faster than standard connection . This just goes to show that stakeholders like the director of BT can have a direct positive impact of the operation of the business. From a critical decision (the addition of ‘infinity broadband’), it meant that the profits of BT rose considerably the following year. In fact, their profits increased by 71% in 2011 due to the fact that BT gained new revenue from its faster broadband (Earnings per share stood at 5.8p, compared with 2.6p a year ago) . This just goes to show that the director has a direct influence on BT