Most companies would stop there, if they considered such a broad range of stakeholders at all. But there are more. As the Powers of 10 increase, the refinery produces particulates and Nox emissions. This affects residents around the refinery, politicians dealing with pollution in their city, and even the gas stations that sell the gas produced by the refinery. Could these stakeholders harm the product’s success? Or could they be used to the company’s advantage? Do they understand how many pollutants come from the refinery? would they be willing to pay extra for their fuel if it is produced with EHF and the air that they breathe is cleaner? Not only does this power begin to address quite removed stakeholders, it also begins to indicate how politics and visibility to the public can influence the product’s success.
Consider Felicia, a high-school science teacher from Boston and mother of one. She pays a lot of attention to the news, especially environmental issues. To contribute to cleaning up the environment, she uses public transportation to get to school, believing that automobiles are the leading cause of the city’s pollution.
Felicia brings clippings about Boston’s environmental concerns to her classroom and asks her students to bring in articles as well. This week, her class is discussing pollution because she recently read an article in the Boston Globe about NOx pollution and particulate matter. She had thought that cars were the major cause of pollutants, but it turned out that industrial plants were. Cleaning up the air and reducing pollution will cost money. She encourages her students to decide for themselves whether they would pay more for clean air. Felicia asks her class to write letters to representatives in Congress and to the governor as well as to executives of the refinery in their community, asking them to support initiatives that reduce pollution. Felicia and others like her are impacted by and can have impact on refineries in their communities and thus are an important part of stakeholder analyses that cannot be ignored, as highlighted by the Powers of 10 analysis.
