By: Gayle Dendinger Issue: Collaborative Women Section:Jewel Of Collaboration
A Lesson in Cooperative Resources
As the year continues to take shape, I am reminded of the new and wonderful opportunities that have been presented to ICOSA. These opportunities would not have come about without the coordinated collaboration of several entities across multiple capacities. ICOSA, as an entity, would not have benefited without the connections it has forged or the stories it has shared. We are graciously indebted to our stakeholders.
It is for this reason I like to think of the stakeholder theory as it applies to business; everyone working together to collaborate and build a sustainable entity that continues to prosper while simultaneously giving back.
Business is combined of a series of simple and complex competitions that keep managers and business executives constantly at the helm, deriving new ways to form the proverbial wheel. At the end of the day, the month or the quarter, each determines how it all fits together to deliver financial profits. There is after all, a responsibility of a company to perform in favor of the people who will directly benefit from its well-being.
The tangible element to measure business success is in fact profit. But how does a company measure its intangible success as it pertains to relationships and its broader responsibility as a public organization which benefits from the interest of people and entities? How does a company give back and create value for its stakeholders?
ICOSA is an example of how unification through teamwork, cooperation and communication can strengthen ties to a community. Each person networks collaboratively with others to keep gathering and utilizing resources, without reinventing the wheel. By coming together, these people have the ability to access many disparate networks, distribute key resources to benefit others, and create value. The stakeholders then have the ability to use these resources based on their own sphere of influence, and the positive or negative affects it may have on their own network.
ICOSA is an example of how unification through teamwork, cooperation and communication can strengthen ties to a community. Now more than ever, businesses have an obligation to recognize stakeholders and the value they bring to a company’s existence. Currently, organizations are judged not just on the profits they turn but how their sustainability in the marketplace coincides with their sustainability as it impacts social and environmental corporate responsibility.
Organizations find that profits are maximized for their shareholders only once their stakeholders commit to the affects or create positive value judgments in regards to their product or service. By taking stakeholder interests into account, organizations can continue to exist. But, stakeholders must remember that without the organization, the ability to transform social enterprises will be eliminated. One cannot exist in harmony without the other.
In business we understand that the stakeholders are critical to continued success. We debate about the long-term prosperity of the company without the support of the stakeholders. Stakeholders and businesses alike can learn from each other how to gather and connect the right people to get things done, while creating sustainability through hard work and results-driven activities.
Here at ICOSA we know we wouldn’t be successful without the help of our collaborative partners and the resources which they have provided us. Together we can construct ideas and capitalize on them to create a mutually beneficial resource for everyone to use.
I would like to thank and acknowledge each and every one of our stakeholders for their continued support and desire to change the way people look at business.