Claims of Stakeholders:

Every stakeholder or stakeholders group in an organization makes demands of the company and want the company to do something to satisfy these demands.These demands are known as claims.Shareholders want high returns of their invest income,employees may want job security and higher pay, customers may want better quality goods at lower prices and so on.

Sometime it is not always possible to identify the claims of a particular group of stakeholders.Certain groups of stakeholders may not know that they have a claim against an organization;others may know that they have a claim but donot know what it is and donot express it openly.This gives rise to a distinction between direct and indirect stakeholder claims.

 

• Direct Stakeholder Claims:

     Direct stakeholder claims are claims made by stakeholders directly,with their own voice.For example employees may make a direct claim for higher pay.Shareholders,customers,suppliers, and sometimes local communities may express direct claims to the company.

 

• Indirect Stakeholder Claims:

       Indirect Stakeholder claims are claims that are not made directly by a stakeholder or stakeholder group,but are made indirectly on thier behalf by someone else.for example:

      a).a small cumtomer of a very large company is too powerless to make claims in his own name.

      b).Terrorist group may claim to represent the interest of people in their region or country.

   c).Future generations have a claim on what a company does today,for example if the company's operations are capable of preserving or destroying the enviroment, future generations will be affected.They are not yet alive and able to express their claim directly,and someone else has to think about their interests for them.

 

A problem with indirect stakeholder claims is that it is not always possible to be sure that the stakeholders are being properly represented and their claims correctly expressed.After all,how can we be sure what future generations will want,or whether a terrorist group really does spean in the interests of a wider community?