| Course | GB710 Contemporary Challenges in Business |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 7 |
| Paper type | Stakeholder impact assessment |
| Length | About 1,100 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GB710 Unit 7
Who Paid for the Margin? A Unit 7 Stakeholder Impact Assessment of a Smaller Graduate Class
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GB710: Contemporary Challenges in Business
Unit 7 Stakeholder Impact Assessment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The firm, its people and every figure are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and sources cited are real.
The Change, Defined Narrowly
The change assessed is a single decision: the firm's decision to hire 26 graduates instead of 40 once software began handling reconciliations, draft workpapers and document screening. The assessment does not evaluate the AI tools themselves, which the firm would have adopted regardless. It evaluates the choice to hire fourteen fewer graduates because of them. Defining the change narrowly matters, because the tools may bring benefits that the intake decision does not, and the two should not be credited or blamed together.
Salience Before Impact
Before tracing impacts, the assessment rates each party's salience using the model Mitchell et al. (1997) proposed: power, the ability to influence the decision; legitimacy, the appropriateness of the party's claim; and urgency, how pressing the claim is.
Partners hold power, legitimacy and moderate urgency, since the decision directly affects their income. Senior associates and managers hold legitimacy and growing urgency but little formal power. Graduates who would have received offers hold legitimacy but no power and no voice in the decision. University accounting programs hold legitimacy and some indirect power through recruiting relationships. Clients hold power and legitimacy, with urgency only if service quality changes. First-years in the smaller class hold legitimacy and some urgency. The firm's future leadership, the managers and partners of a decade from now, holds legitimacy but cannot yet speak.
The ratings show a familiar pattern: the parties with the most power are also the ones who receive the near-term gains. The parties with the weakest voice, graduates and future leaders, cannot attend the meeting where intake is set.
The Two-Horizon Ledger
Partners. Near term: a margin gain from about $1.2 million lower salary and benefit costs, partly offset by the tools' licensing fees. Five years: a likely shortage of managers, since today's smaller class is tomorrow's pool of seniors and managers, raising the cost of lateral hiring and possibly limiting growth.
Senior associates and managers. Near term: more hours reviewing AI output and absorbing tasks first-years used to do, with more overtime in busy season. Five years: fewer juniors to delegate to and fewer peers, increasing workload further as the smaller class moves up.
Graduates who would have received offers. Near term: fourteen fewer offers from this firm. If many firms make similar cuts, a narrower entry point to the profession. Five years: some will have entered other careers and will not return to public accounting.
University accounting programs. Near term: fewer placements, weakening the programs' recruiting pitch. Five years: further declines in accounting enrollment, which already faces a shrinking supply of students.
Clients. Near term: little visible change, since the tools maintain turnaround. Five years: possible effects on service if review capacity thins and senior turnover rises.
First-years in the smaller class. Near term: each receives more varied work but less peer support and fewer chances to learn from one another. Five years: those who stay may advance faster because of the shortage above them.
The firm's future leadership. Near term: none visible. Five years: a smaller and less experienced pipeline, which Doeringer and Piore (1971) would describe as a weakening of the firm's internal labor market, the system through which it develops its own managers rather than buying them from outside.
The partners who decided collected the gain this year; the seniors and the firm's future leaders will carry most of the cost later.
Senior Associates, Squeezed Twice
The ledger shows one group carrying costs on both horizons. Senior associates and managers absorb the work first-years used to do in the near term, and in five years they will have fewer juniors to delegate to and fewer colleagues at their own level. They are also the group most likely to leave if workloads rise, and their departure would deepen the shortage. Of all the parties, they have the most legitimate claim to be consulted about intake decisions and the least formal power to shape them.
Why the Costs Are Easy to Miss
The near-term gains appear in the firm's financial statements within a year: lower salary expense and higher margin. The costs appear in places partners rarely look. Senior overtime is recorded in time systems but seldom reported to the partner group. Departures are noted individually rather than as a trend. The effect on the management pipeline will not appear for years, and when it does it will look like a hiring problem rather than the consequence of a decision made long before. A decision whose benefits are measured and whose costs are not will tend to look better than it is.
What a Fair Process Would Look Like
A fairer process for setting intake would not require a particular answer. It would require that the parties carrying the costs be heard before the decision and that the costs be measured after it. In practice that means asking senior associates in each office how much first-year work they are absorbing, reporting senior hours and departures to the partners alongside margin, and reviewing the intake decision each year against those measures. Such a process would give the seniors, the group with the most legitimate claim and the least power, a voice proportionate to what they bear.
Who Gains and Who Pays, Summarized
Near-term gains go mainly to partners. Near-term costs fall mainly on seniors and on graduates who were not hired. Five-year costs fall on partners, seniors, clients and the firm's future leadership, while the only clear five-year gain goes to the first-years who stay and advance. Freeman (1984) argued that firms that ignore stakeholders who can affect their future performance put that performance at risk, and the seniors and future leaders are exactly such stakeholders.
Recommendations, with Addressees
To the managing partner: treat next year's intake as a decision to be made with data on senior hours and departures, not as a continuation of this year's cut.
To the human resources director: report senior overtime, departures and hours on first-year tasks quarterly to the partners.
To office managing partners: consult senior associates before setting intake numbers for their offices.
To the recruiting team: maintain relationships with university programs even in years of smaller intake, since those relationships take years to rebuild and the firm will need them when intake rises again.
References
Doeringer, P. B., & Piore, M. J. (1971). Internal labor markets and manpower analysis. Heath.
Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Pitman.
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853-886. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1997.9711022105
GB710 Unit 7 instructions, in plain terms
The seventh GB710 assignment asks you to assess who gains and who loses from a specific organizational change. Define the change narrowly, separating it from related decisions. Rate each stakeholder's salience, for example on power, legitimacy and urgency, before tracing impacts. Build a ledger that traces impacts for each party over more than one time horizon, since costs and benefits often arrive at different times. Identify any party that carries costs on several horizons. Explain why some costs are easy to miss. Describe what a fairer decision process would look like. Close with recommendations, each addressed to a specific person or role. Seven pages built on a ledger, with frameworks cited in APA 7, is common for GB710.
Inside the GB710 Unit 7 example
The assessment defines the change as the intake decision alone, apart from the tools. A salience section rates seven parties and shows that the most powerful receive the near-term gains. A two-horizon ledger traces partners, seniors, graduates not hired, university programs, clients, the smaller class and the firm's future leadership, using Doeringer and Piore on internal labor markets. The highlighted sentence contrasts who collected the gain with who carries the cost. Seniors are shown squeezed in both horizons. A section explains why the costs escape partners' notice, and a fairer process is described. Freeman's stakeholder argument frames the summary, and four recommendations name their addressees.
GB710 Unit 7 rubric: what earns full points
GB710 instructors award points in this assessment for distribution, not only totals. A narrowly defined change earns credit because it keeps related decisions from muddying the analysis. Salience ratings before impacts show why the decision favored some parties. A ledger with more than one horizon carries heavy weight, since it reveals costs that arrive later and fall on different people. Identifying a party squeezed on several horizons demonstrates insight. Explaining why costs escape notice, and describing a fairer process, shows the assessment addresses how decisions are made. Recommendations with named addressees and APA 7 citations complete the GB710 rubric. Instructors also look for consistency between the ledger and the recommendations, so that every cost the ledger identifies has someone assigned to watch it.
GB710 Unit 7 help from the desk
Many GB710 stakeholder assessments list parties and their interests without tracing what the change actually does to each. Others assess only the near term, missing costs that arrive years later. A common gap is defining the change too broadly, so the effects of different decisions blur together. Writers often omit parties without a voice, such as graduates not hired or future managers. Recommendations are frequently addressed to the organization in general rather than to anyone who could act. Define the change narrowly, rate salience, trace impacts over two horizons, find who is squeezed twice, explain why costs hide and address each recommendation to a role. A free custom stakeholder assessment can be ordered here.
Get a GB710 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Describe the change or decision your section wants assessed, the organization involved and the Unit 7 prompt with its rubric. A custom assessment is returned within 24-48h, tracing costs and gains to each party over more than one horizon and addressing recommendations to named decision-makers. A first sample comes at no charge. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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GB710 Unit 7 questions, answered
Which stakeholder framework suits a GB710 assessment?
Mitchell, Agle and Wood's salience model, rating power, legitimacy and urgency, works well when the question is why some parties shape a decision and others do not. A power and interest grid is simpler and common in practice. Choose one, apply it to every party with reasons, and let it inform the impact analysis instead of standing alone.
How can long-term impacts be assessed without data?
By reasoning from a mechanism and labeling the result as a projection. If fewer graduates are hired now, fewer mid-level staff will have been trained internally in five years; the magnitude is uncertain, the direction less so. State the assumption, rate your confidence and identify the evidence that would confirm or overturn the projection.
Should the assessment include parties outside the organization?
Yes, where the change affects them materially. Universities, clients, vendors and job seekers often carry significant costs or gains from internal decisions. Doctoral readers expect the boundary of the analysis to be drawn deliberately and explained, rather than stopping at the organization's walls by default. A sentence stating who was left out, and why, is usually enough to show that the boundary was a choice.
Where can I find a free GB710 Unit 7 sample paper?
This page carries a complete GB710 Unit 7 stakeholder impact assessment of a composite accounting firm's smaller graduate class, with salience ratings, a two-horizon ledger and addressed recommendations.
Why use two time horizons?
Because the savings from hiring fewer graduates appear in the first year, while costs such as senior overload and a thin management pipeline appear years later and fall on different people.