For the discussion post, I have selected an article from The Ney York Times titled, "Stakeholder Capitalism Gets a Report Card. It's Not Good", by Peter S. Goodman. After reading this article, I could not help but notice the many similarities to chapter 2 of our textbook "Managing Public Issues and Stakeholder Relationships." The focus of this article is Marc Benioff, C.E.O. of the technology giant Salesforce, who positions himself as a visionary for stakeholder capitalism, the idea that businesses must prioritize the interests of workers, the environment, and local communities in addition to stakeholders.

The article mentions how Mr. Benioff declared validation in August as Salesforce celebrated more than $5 billion in sales. Yet, Salesforce informed 1,000 employees that their jobs were no longer needed the next day. The article states, "Its signatories have done no better than other companies in protecting jobs, labor rights, and workplace safety during the pandemic while failing to distinguish themselves in pursuit of racial and gender equality." This is a great example of a public issue because it concerns many people, like workers and stakeholders. This issue affects the stakeholder, the company, and its workers economically.

The article states, "The Business Roundtable presents its mission statement as a reflection of the belief that C.E.O.s face extraordinary pressure to protect workers, the environment, and community interests or suffer punishment in the marketplace." This is the environmental analysis presented in the textbook because it is a method to gather information about external issues, so they develop strategies to minimize threats and take advantage of new opportunities (pg. 29). The stakeholders are trying to minimize the public issue by creating attention and awareness to the concern with the statement and trying to make a profit at the same time.

In addition, companies signed the Business Roundtable statement shown above. It was brought to attention that although C.E.O. Jeff Bezos signed the Business Roundtable statement, Amazon has become a well-known example of a company profiting from the pandemic. This year, it sold more than $164 billion in goods despite allegations of failing to protect workers. This is the issue management process presented in the textbook chapter 2 because there are five steps a company should consider when allocating an issue: identifying the issue, analyzing the issue, generating options, taking action, and evaluating results. In this case, Amazon was only looking forward to benefiting its stakeholder and creating public issues with its employees.

The takeaway of the importance of this article that relates to the textbook is that businesses and society form interactive social systems in which each other's actions have a significant impact. Businesses must create value for their stakeholders and create value for their employees and customers to make a profit. To do so, they should create relationships and engagement in the firms to address common concerns.

You can read this article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/business/business-roudtable-stakeholder-capitalism.htmlLinks to an external site.

• Identifying public issues and analyzing gaps between corporate performance and stakeholder expectations is important as a manager and/or business owner. This chapter will cover some available tools or techniques to scan an organization's multiple environments and assess stakeholder materiality. It is important to know and understand the steps in the issue management process and determine how to make the process most effective. Lastly, creating stakeholder dialogue and networks is very valuable to an organization.

• Provide similarities to other topics and/or articles and provide references. ?
• Discuss strengths or weaknesses of the post with evidence.?