Difference Between Primary and Secondary Stakeholders

Different terms have been used to define and identify a stakeholder. Stakeholders can generally be defined as individuals or organizations that have a share or stake in a particular system or issue. In a business oriented term, stakeholders can be defined as organizations or individuals who stand to lose or gain from either the success or failure of a system. In this definition, the term system has been used to represent any form of business that a group of people or an individual can be engaged in. Stakeholders can be organizations, institutions, groups of people or individuals. Other terms that have been used in similar ways are interest groups and actors. Therefore, stakeholders are active and mostly interact with each other (Fernando, 2009).

From the definition of stakeholders, they are people that are affected or have an impact or effect on a system or organization. Therefore, for an organization to run effectively, their views and perspectives have to be taken into account. Therefore, anyone who has an impact on a system or is affected by the system either directly or indirectly is referred to as a stakeholder. Since stakeholders have a view or perspective in the running of a system or organization, they can in one way or another affect the day to day running of the organization. It would be important to note that stakeholders are not just people who are can influence or who might be affected by an organization. They also include people who think that they can influence an organization or project, or those who think that a given project may have an impact on them (Fernando, 2009).

There are different types of stakeholders; they include primary stakeholders and secondary stakeholders. Primary stakeholders are individuals ...

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