A stakeholder is an individual or group that has an interest or concern in an organization.  A stakeholder may either affect or be affected by the business (Fernando, 2021).  Typically, the primary stakeholders in a business are its investors, employees, customers, and suppliers (Fernando, 2021).  Stakeholders can be internal or external to the company.  For example, internal stakeholders are individuals that have a direct relationship with the company like employment, ownership, or investment (Fernando, 2021).  External stakeholders are individuals who do not have direct contact with the company by being affected by the actions or outcomes of the business such as suppliers, creditors, or the community (Fernando, 2021).  I think that the organization identifies who its stakeholders are and categorizes them by stakeholder mapping.

An organization that had to change its behavior due to public outcry is Tide.  In 2012 Tide pods came out and young children around the country were ingesting the laundry pods.  After many complained about the lack of safety measures around the packaging, Tide changed its packaging to have a child-guard safety lock around it, made the liquid inside have a bitter taste, and broadcasted commercials talking about how ingesting this product is poisonous and parents need to be vigilant.  Fast forward to 2018, a new social media challenge took over where individuals filmed themselves eating Tide pods.  This resulted in another public outcry for better safety measures.  Tide decided they were going to change the color of the pods so they do not look like edible candy.  I do believe that these two instances are an example of corporate stakeholder responsibility.  Stakeholders went public with their opinion and demanded that Tide change its colors and make packaging safe.  Lawmakers also got involved in both situations by creating a bill that requires manufacturers to add warning labels, make the packets less vibrant, and sell them in child-resistant packaging (Janeway, 2018).

In my opinion, it is the whole societys responsibility to make sure organizations are being corporately responsible.  In a perfect world, I would hope that it would be the government so everyday people dont have to be aware of the organization’s everyday practices but that is not the case.