Power to the people

The internet has empowered stakeholders, enabling them to shape your company 

 
The internet, although still in its infancy, has fundamentally altered our social, economic and political lives. The impact of the internet is equal to that of the printing press, which shifted the means of information from central authorities to the masses, helping to destroy feudal society, principalities, and undermining the church’s authority over publishing. Until the internet, news gathering, editing and distribution were still owned by large corporations. Anyone can now gather and distribute news, and the mass media is finding it difficult to keep pace. Consider that the 2008 Mumbai massacre was tweeted and emailed around the world by those caught in the carnage to other individuals before the news media was covering the situation. The internet has transformed the market environment for virtually every company, empowering consumers, increasing the threat of new entrants, and creating new competitive opportunities or risks for existing companies. The economist Ronald Coase had found in his Nobel Prize winning article The Nature of the Firm (1937) that the primary economic rationale for integrated corporations was the lowering of search and transaction costs. The internet has stripped these advantages from many companies, changing industries as diverse as automobile, travel and entertainment.

Elliot Schreiber

Elliot Schreiber is clinical professor of marketing and executive director of the Centre for Corporate Reputation Management at the Bennett S. LeBow College of Business, Drexel University in Philadelphia. He was also a professor at the DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario from 2001to 2004, and has been a visiting professor at Penn State, Syracuse, Temple and Villanova. From 2006 to 2007, he was senior adviser to the Reputation Institute, New York. Other developments in his career led him to work for major corporations such as Bayer and Nortel.