| Course | MT313 Corporate Sustainability and Social Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 7 |
| Paper type | Stakeholder salience analysis |
| Length | About 1,130 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT313 Unit 7
Who Pays for the Drive-Thru: An MT313 Unit 7 Stakeholder Salience Analysis of Closing 120 Dining Rooms
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT313: Corporate Sustainability and Social Responsibility
Unit 7 Stakeholder Analysis
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The chain, the plan and all figures are composite; the salience model and sources cited are real.
The Decision
Over 18 months, 120 company-operated restaurants with drive-thru lanes will close their dining rooms permanently and convert to drive-thru and pickup only. The chain expects labor savings of about $9 million a year and faster service. Every stakeholder below is judged against that single change.
The Model
Freeman (1984) opened the idea of stakeholders to anyone whose actions shape a firm's goals or whose lives those goals touch. Mitchell et al. (1997) then asked which of those people managers actually listen to, and answered with three attributes. Power is the capacity to force an outcome. Legitimacy is a claim others accept as proper. Urgency belongs to a claim whose holder needs an answer soon and cares about it intensely. A party holding one attribute is latent; two, expectant; all three, definitive. Among the expectant, a party with power and legitimacy is dominant, a party with a proper and pressing claim but no power is dependent and a party with power and a pressing claim but no accepted standing is dangerous.
Eleven Stakeholders
1. Dining-room crew, about 480 positions. Stake: jobs. Power: low; no union, positions can be cut. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: high; positions disappear on a known date. Class: dependent. Lever: public statements, quitting before closure.
2. Older regulars. Stake: a place to sit and meet. Power: low individually. Legitimacy: moderate. Urgency: moderate. Class: discretionary to dependent. Lever: complaints, local media.
3. Customers who walk or cannot drive. Stake: access. Power: low. Legitimacy: high, especially where the restaurant is near senior housing or bus lines. Urgency: high. Class: dependent. Lever: disability advocates, planning comments.
4. Neighbors. Stake: car queues spilling into streets. Power: low until a hearing. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: moderate. Class: dependent, shifting to definitive if a hearing is scheduled.
5. City planning commissions. Stake: traffic and land use. Power: high; can require permits for drive-thru expansion. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: low until a complaint. Class: dominant.
6. Franchisees. Stake: whether the model will be pushed to them. Power: moderate. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: low during pilot. Class: dominant.
7. Investors. Stake: margins. Power: high. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: low. Class: dominant.
8. Landlord of 40 leased sites. Stake: lease terms on dining room use. Power: moderate to high; some leases require operation as a full-service restaurant. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: moderate. Class: definitive at affected sites.
9. Drive-thru crew. Stake: heavier workload. Power: low. Legitimacy: high. Urgency: moderate. Class: dependent.
10. Delivery partners. Stake: more pickup orders. Power: moderate. Legitimacy: moderate. Urgency: low. Class: dormant to dominant.
11. Local media. Stake: a story. Power: moderate. Legitimacy: low as a claimant. Urgency: high when a story breaks. Class: dangerous.
The Salience Diagram
In the three overlapping circles, investors, franchisees and planning commissions sit where power and legitimacy overlap. Crew, walk-in customers and neighbors sit where legitimacy and urgency overlap, without power. The landlord sits in the center at its 40 sites. Local media sits where power and urgency overlap.
The people who lose most from the plan hold proper, pressing claims and almost no power, which is exactly where the model predicts managers will look away.
Who Gains and Who Pays
Gains. Investors gain margin. Drive-thru customers may gain speed. Delivery partners gain orders.
Pays. Dining-room crew lose about 480 positions. Customers who walk or cannot drive lose access entirely, since a drive-thru serves only those in cars. Older regulars lose a social space. Neighbors absorb longer car queues. Drive-thru crew absorb heavier volume.
Most of the benefit goes to stakeholders with power; most of the cost falls on stakeholders without it. Carroll (1991) argued that a firm's ethical duties run to all stakeholders affected by its decisions, not only those who can make demands, and the sections that follow turn to what the dependent stakeholders are owed.
How Classes Shift
The model is dynamic. If a neighbor files a complaint about car queues and a planning commission schedules a hearing, neighbors gain power through the commission and become definitive. The commission gains urgency and also becomes definitive. At that point, the chain must respond to them. The same can happen with customers who cannot drive if a disability advocacy group joins, or with crew if local media takes up their story. The chain's plan should not assume that today's dependent stakeholders will stay powerless.
What the Pilot Restaurants Show
Twelve restaurants closed their dining rooms in a pilot last spring. Drive-thru sales rose 14 percent, but total sales fell 4 percent, mostly at the morning hours when older regulars used to sit. Two pilot sites near senior apartment buildings saw the largest drops. At one site, cars queued onto a public road on Saturday mornings, and the city's traffic office sent a warning letter within six weeks. The pilot shows the model's predictions in practice: losses fell on regulars and walk-in customers, and neighbors gained power quickly through the city.
Why Salience Is Not the Same as Merit
Mitchell et al. (1997) described how managers actually prioritize, not how they should. A stakeholder with low salience may have the strongest moral claim. Crew whose jobs disappear and customers who lose access have claims that are legitimate whether or not they can force a response. A responsible plan should address them because their claims are valid, not only because they might gain power later.
Mitigations, Priced
1. Redeployment for crew. Offer every dining-room crew member a position at a nearby restaurant or a drive-thru role, with $500 retention pay for those who transfer. Cost: about $240,000 if all accept.
2. Walk-up window at sites near senior housing or bus lines. About 18 of the 120 sites. Cost: about $35,000 each, $630,000 total.
3. Queue management at sites with neighbor risk. Stacking lanes and staff with tablets at peak. Cost: roughly $1.2 million over the first twelve months.
4. Lease review at 40 leased sites before closing any dining room. Cost: legal fees, about $60,000.
5. Community notice. Notify regulars and neighbors 60 days before each closure. Cost: minimal.
Total: about $2.1 million, against $9 million a year in expected savings.
Conclusion
The drive-thru conversion's benefits flow mainly to stakeholders with power, while its costs fall on crew, customers who cannot drive and neighbors, who hold proper, pressing claims but little power. Planning commissions and some landlords hold the practical veto. Priced mitigations of about $2.1 million address the dependent stakeholders' claims and reduce the risk that they gain power through a hearing.
References
Carroll, A. B. (1991). The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons, 34(4), 39-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(91)90005-G
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
The Purdue Global MT313 Unit 7 instructions
In Unit 7 students map the stakeholders of one specific business decision. The decision should be stated first so every stakeholder is judged against the same change. A table or list should give each party's stake, its attributes and the lever it could use. Instructors expect attributes such as power, legitimacy and urgency to be assigned with evidence, not impression. A salience diagram or similar visual is common. The analysis should ask who gains and who pays, and how stakeholder classes could shift. Many prompts expect a distinction between how managers prioritize stakeholders and what stakeholders are owed. Mitigations, ideally priced, should close the paper. Real data, such as pilot results, strengthens the analysis considerably.
How the MT 313 Unit 7 example is put together
The sample states the decision and expected savings of about $9 million a year. The model is explained from Freeman and from Mitchell and colleagues. Eleven stakeholders are listed with stake, attributes, class and lever. The diagram places investors, franchisees and commissions as dominant and crew, walk-in customers and neighbors as dependent, under the highlighted line that those who lose most hold proper, pressing claims and almost no power. A gains and costs section follows, with Carroll on duties to all affected. A section shows classes shifting when a hearing is scheduled. Twelve pilot restaurants show sales falling at senior housing sites and a city warning letter. Five priced mitigations total about $2.1 million.
MT313 Unit 7 rubric: what earns full points
Stakeholder analyses are mostly assessed on accurate use of the model, evidence behind attribute assignments, insight into who gains and pays and the quality of mitigations. Graders reward analyses that keep every stakeholder tied to one decision. Attributes should be justified. The diagram should match the table. Recognizing that classes shift over time shows understanding of the model's dynamics. Distinguishing salience from moral claim shows ethical maturity. Mitigations should be specific and costed. The salience model and stakeholder theory sources appear in APA 7. Analyses that list stakeholders without attributes, or that treat the most powerful stakeholders as the only ones that matter, usually score lower. Using real data where it exists makes the predictions testable.
MT313 Unit 7 help: mistakes that cost points
Stakeholder papers often list groups such as employees, customers and community without saying what each stands to lose or what it could do. Another common weakness is assigning power, legitimacy and urgency by impression. Some students forget that classes change, so a powerless group today may become definitive tomorrow. Mitigations are often missing or unpriced. Before drafting, write the decision in one sentence, then list everyone who would notice the change in the first month. For each, ask what they could do about it. Those answers usually reveal the hidden veto holders and the parties who will bear the cost without any say.
Get an MT313 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Give the decision your Unit 7 prompt sets, or the organization if the decision is yours to pick, and the stakeholder model the course uses. Within 24-48h the analysis comes back with a table, evidence behind every attribute, a salience diagram and priced mitigations. The first custom sample is free and is written against your own rubric. 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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MT313 Unit 7 questions, answered
Does the analysis have to use the salience model?
Not necessarily. Some MT313 sections assign a power and interest grid or a plain table of gains and losses. The salience model suits a decision where urgency changes over time, which is why the example uses it. Your prompt's model is the one the sample applies, with evidence behind each placement whichever grid it happens to be.
Why are no stakeholders labeled dangerous?
Because none fits. In Mitchell, Agle and Wood's model, dangerous means holding power and urgency without legitimacy, often through coercion. Every party here has a legitimate claim, so that class stays empty. Assigning it just to make a diagram look complete is a common error, and the example avoids it on purpose, explaining the choice in a sentence.
How specific do stakeholder groups need to be?
Specific enough that each has a distinct stake and a distinct lever. 'Customers' hides the difference between drive-thru regulars who gain and walk-in regulars who lose. The example splits groups wherever their interests diverge, and your analysis earns more by doing the same, even when the table grows longer as a result.
Where can I find a free MT313 Unit 7 sample paper?
The complete MT313 Unit 7 stakeholder analysis is on this page, mapping eleven parties affected by closing 120 dining rooms.
Who holds the veto in the MT313 Unit 7 sample?
City planning commissions and, at 40 leased sites, the landlord whose leases may require full-service operation.