The Harley-Davidson motorcycle company
The Harley-Davidson motorcycle company is a renowned brand in the United States. However, product sales in the company faced an alarming decline in 2008, and although Harley-Davidson currently experiences growth, it almost stagnant. The corporation faces struggles in diversifying its market hold as a global business due to its high prices and restrictive legislation. Moreover, the company tailors its models to fit with the needs of its previous customers, baby boomers and forgets to variegate its product to millennial preferences. Thus, the corporation needs to change its strategy to ensure high sales and increase its international dominance.
Harley-Davidson should create a strategic plan that diversifies its products to fit the needs of different age-groups and economic classes. Therefore, it needs to analyze its stakeholders to determine its most valuable group for this strategic plan. The corporation, just like all other businesses, has internal and external stakeholders. These groups include owners, shareholders, managers, employees, customers, governments, creditors, suppliers, and the surrounding community.
The most significant stakeholder group in Harley-Davidson’s growth strategy is the employees. Employees create and deliver the company’s products to their customers. They also play the role of inventors and innovators in the company’s different models (Harley-Davidson, 2020). The people in charge of these products ought to top the stakeholder influence map since the strategic plan intends to expand the corporation’s product mix. Moreover, advertising the company’s brand with the help of the employees would help increase Harley-Davidson’s international recognition. Therefore, the company must avoid having disengaged or dissatisfied employees as this would change people’s perception of the brand, making it harder to grow.
Employees in the company also have essential knowledge from their long experiences working in the company. Thompson (2005) contends that effecting stakeholder change necessitates their engagement in the workplace and considering their legitimate skills in decision-making. Additionally, Thompson (2005) states that stakeholder engagement and feedback substantially help in actualizing the organization’s strategic goals. Since the employees are the primary stakeholder group, they need to have simplified and constant knowledge of the strategic plan in this case.
In most companies, employee motivation comes from good salaries, fair treatments, proper communication pathways, incentives, and persona passion. Dyler et al. (2018) state that a company’s interaction with key stakeholders affects their general performance. A corporation, therefore, needs to incorporate stakeholder wellness initiatives in its daily operations. For instance, Harley-Davidson can increase employee morale through superior services such as compensations, more flexible working hours, better insurance policies, and incentives. Such motivations are critical to strategic planning as they increase employee drive into creating better and variegated models that can propel international growth for Harley-Davidson.
Communication strategies are critical to any company’s success. Thompson (2005) avers that ensuring stakeholder communications reduces the workload in implementing new strategic plans significantly. The company must initiate weekly communication-oriented meetings for employees from different departments and their managers. The integration of employees from different levels helps in the sharing of ideas and keeps these stakeholders in the loop concerning the strategic plan (Dyler et al. 2018). For instance, these meetings allow junior employees (who have limited communication channels) to raise their concerns on factors in the plan that may affect progress on the strategic plan. Such meetings would increase employee motivation and empowerment and stress the essence of equality in decision-making. These meetings would inadvertently lead to development toward different models, marketing methods such as segmentation, and better ways of tapping into the international market.
Employees are essential stakeholders in product creation, marketing, sales, and increasing brand recognition. An organization must, therefore, ensure employee cooperation in the implementation of a new growth strategy. Harley-Davidson should motivate its employees to create new models to increase its relevance in the U.S. and internationally.
References
Dyer, J., Godfrey, P., Jensen, R., & Bryce, D. (2018). Strategic management: Concepts and cases (2nd ed.) Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Harley-Davidson. (2020). Our company. https://www.harley-davidson.com/us/en/products/bikes.html
Thompson, W. (2005). Effecting change through active engagement with stakeholders [Books24x7 version]. http://common.books24x7.com/toc.aspx?bookid=38399