Let's take a moment to consider organisational stakeholders and their accountability demands a little further. We can do this through a series of steps.

1. Choose a specific organisation familiar to you and then write down as many stakeholders as you can think of. You may start by listing some of the more obvious ones but also try to think of those that are not so obvious. Avoid looking up the organisation or looking online for this information. You can do that later.
2. Consider the stakeholder claims or demands on the organisation for some of the stakeholders you have identified. What are the responsibilities/accountabilities that exist between the organisation and the stakeholder?
3. Consider any conflicts between the stakeholder groups. Do any of the claims or accountability demands compete against each other? Consider what challenges this would bring in relation to stakeholder engagement.
4. You may now wish to go online and consider how your selected organisation has discussed stakeholders. Who have they recognised and not recognised? In what way? It might be useful to reflect on the stakeholder salience model discussed above here.

While each of the stages above might appear quite straightforward, you should be seeing how they lead to quite complex outcomes. These relationships and accountabilities also go to the heart of much of the discussions in the following chapters.