O’Reilly Auto Parts Stakeholder Analysis
Amanda Gilreath
BUAD 4000
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
06/02/2014
Professor Van Scotter

O’Reilly Auto Parts Stakeholder Analysis
Being one of Fortune 500’s dominating corporations in the United States, O’Reilly Auto Parts influences a large amount of people and groups. These influences affect primary stakeholders who are entities and individuals that are immediately and directly influenced, and secondary stakeholders who are entities and individuals that are affected less immediately and in sometimes a more trivial manner. Although these effects may be small or large, it is imperative that O’Reilly Auto Parts considers its influence over the well being of all stakeholders, as its actions are proprietary to its subordinate’s obtainment of benefit or burden. Generally corporations focus on its primary stakeholders because they are the most noticeable and affected. However, it is myopic for a corporation to ignore or act in reluctance to its secondary stakeholders in naivety of the actual ripple that its action may cause. This is why stakeholder consideration and action is becoming a more ascendant quality of corporations.
The analysis of four O’Reilly Auto Parts stakeholders will be discussed in this paper, each with its own synopsis of this corporations attempt to perpetuate its positive influence, and/or its failure to do so in particular areas. The stakeholders analyzed are customers, a primary stakeholder, and future generations and Earth’s biosphere, which are both secondary stakeholders.
Primary Stakeholder: Customers
Positives: Customer Stakeholder
The customer is perhaps the most salient stakeholder. Providing the upmost care to the customer ensures lucrative sustainability of any retail sales corporation. O’Reilly Auto Parts has focused the majority of its efforts on the customer. Embedded in the culture is a pledge to provide optimal customer service (“The O’Reilly Culture”, n.d.). One way that O’Reilly Auto Parts attempts to execute this cultural goal is through the “never say no” challenge in which O’Reilly encourages all employees to never tell a customer they cannot find an auto part, even if it is not housed with one of their suppliers. The part must be somewhere and all resources must be exhausted before saying “no”. It is the employee’s duty to go the extra mile and satisfy the customer. This idea supports O’Reilly Auto Parts unremitting goal to ultimately become the dominant auto parts supplier.
Critiques: Customer Stakeholder
One key issue prevails with the satisfaction of the customer and the implementation of pledges such as the “never say no” challenge, and it is that this corporation’s employees level of competence about vehicles and supplier resources tend to be rudimentary. Automatically any pledges for optimal customer service are countervailed to a certain amount. The customer as a stakeholder is neglected in this way.
Advice to O’Reilly Auto Parts. If this is the most important stakeholder, O’Reilly Auto Parts should raise their standard of employee capability. Of course this action will directly lead to a necessity in higher wages. However, this action will indeed provide the quickest fulfillment of this primary stakeholder gap. It is possible that O’Reilly Auto Parts has already conducted a cost-benefit analysis of higher waged and more knowledgeable workers and applying this action may not provide a net financial benefit over the current situation. However, raising the bar on knowledge is the first step to catering the customer stakeholder.
Secondary Stakeholder: Biosphere
Positives: Biosphere Stakeholder Recycling used motor oil for free is a major piece of this corporation’s effort to save the biosphere. According to the O’Reilly Auto Parts website, their recycled oil program kept 6.3 million gallons of used oil from improper disposal in 2010. This is the most recent data. The website also explains that the company Safety-Kleen collects all used oil. They re-refine the used oil or use it to make other products such as asphalt. O’Reilly Auto Parts will also recycle used oil filters for free. All batteries are welcome for proper disposal and refurbishment as well. They will even give a $5 gift card for every vehicle battery brought in except for core charge battery swaps. Being a participant in selling ecologically friendly products is part of O’Reilly’s effort in influencing safer consumerism. The most important products are cleaner greases from Clarion, who produces environmentally safe white oil lubricants, and the recycled motor oil from Valvoline called Nextgen, which is not cleaner, but indefinitely promotes less oil refining and supports innovation of used products that would otherwise pollute. Supporting products that benefit the environment is an important step to promoting a cleaner biosphere. Critiques: Biosphere Stakeholder Even though O’Reilly Auto Parts enforces this nexus of biosphere benefits, the biosphere stakeholder is still one of only partial acknowledgment. There is a trend of solely providing benefit to the biosphere when there is a financial gain. For example, all used oil that is collected from customers for free is then sold for profit to the oil re-refining company, Safety-Kleen (O’Reilly corporate services, personal communication, June 6, 2014). All eco-friendly products generate profit. Nicole Simpson a store manager for O’Reilly Auto Parts confirms that all car batteries received that are part of the $5 gift card program and other non-car batteries generate profit as well, as they are sold back to O’Reilly Auto Parts supplier, East Penn, who then refurbishes the batteries to sell back to their customers for profit (personal communication, June 6, 2014). Advice to O’Reilly Auto Parts. O’Reilly Auto Parts should engage in more meaningful philanthropy to the biosphere. Go the extra mile and make it public. Customers will enjoy knowing that they are purchasing from an environmentally social responsible company that strives for much more than the bare minimum. All of the eco-friendly information about products and services that O’Reilly Auto Parts provides on their website makes this company seem to be going the extra mile for the biosphere, when in fact after conducting research, the information on the company website seems like empty rhetoric by extoling a narcissistic praise on themselves, exemplifying a corporate façade.
Secondary Stakeholder: Future Generations Positives: Future Generation Stakeholder O’Reilly Auto Parts core benefit to future generations is simply the fact that they will be around for a long time. This company is large and growing fast. They will supply mediocre jobs to middle class Americans for years to come. This benefit is a market action and does not require the accruement of any net losses while doing so. Other than this, the only other benefit to the future generation stakeholder is the scant amount of environmentally sustainable financial pursuits that O’Reilly Auto Parts partakes in. The future generations stakeholder is depending on the residents of Earth right now, and O’Reilly Auto Parts has taken somewhat of an initiative to help. Critiques: Future Generation Stakeholder Most everyone understands the biohazard that big business can be for our future. This is why O’Reilly Auto Parts, along with many others in O’Reilly’s defense, have failed to work on building a brighter future. Hardly any research of O’Reilly Auto Parts shows even an awareness of this stakeholder. The only philanthropic actions that may have relevance to the future generation stakeholder are accidental correlations from pursuing other stakeholders, such as the biosphere, customer, or even their donations to the community such as the United Way to help children in school (“United Way Honors Volunteers, Donors”, 2014). Advice to O’Reilly Auto Parts. Probably the best thing a large corporation such as O’Reilly Auto Parts can do would be to ensure a sustainable future. Really kicking into high gear what it means to be an “Earth protector” by leading the way and setting an example for future corporations would be ideal. Other ways of pursuing the future generation stakeholder would be funding programs that search for renewable energy. There are an innumerable amount of philanthropic activities that can be done to benefit this stakeholder. The great thing about helping the future generation stakeholder is that while in the process of doing so many other stakeholders are being helped in an unintended but positive way.

References
The O’Reilly Culture. (n.d.). Retrieved June 4, 2014 from http:// https://corporate.oreillyauto.com.
Recycling Made Easy. (n.d). Retrieved June 4, 2014 from http:// https://corporate.oreillyauto.com.
WKBN Staff. (2014) United Way Honors Volunteers, Donors. Retrieved June 6, 2014 from http://27wkbn.