How can stakeholders be affected

Our academic writers have all levels of degrees so that we can accommodate all academic levels. For any questions, feedback, or comments, we have an ethical customer support team that is always waiting on the line for your inquiries. Owners have the most impact, as they make decisions about the activities of the business and provide funding to enable it to start up and grow.

Employees may have a limited amount of influence on business decisions. Customers buy products and services and give feedback to businesses on how to improve them. Suppliers can have a significant impact on a business if there are any changes in the quality of the goods they supply or the reliability of their deliveries. Local community. If a business affects a large number of local residents negatively, they may protest or object through the local council.

They could also have opportunities for promotion to new roles. Some employees could feel resentful if they are not offered opportunities. Customers will benefit from having more choice about where to shop, but they may remain loyal to existing businesses.

Through good marketing activity by the business, some may be tempted to try the new store. Suppliers benefit from increased orders to equip and stock the new store, which might lead to an increase in their profits. It allows you to use the analysis to help gain support and buy-in for your effort. Community-based and community-focused organizations and institutions may be more likely to have other purposes in mind when the issue of stakeholder management arises. A big question here is whether the whole concept of stakeholder management is in fact directly opposed to the idea of participatory process, where everyone has a voice.

In practice, we all try to manage people constantly, from attempting to convince a skeptical three-year-old that broccoli tastes good to motivating students and employees to do their best. Persuasion, negotiation, education, and other methods of managing stakeholders that acknowledge their concerns, however, do not violate that spirit, and are often a necessary part of making a participatory process work. The first step in stakeholder management is to understand clearly where each stakeholder lies in the grid.

Stakeholders with neither power nor interest would go in the lower left-hand corner of the lower left quadrant. Those with a reasonable amount of power and interest would go in the middle of the upper-right quadrant, etc.

Eventually, the grid will be filled in with the names of stakeholders occupying various places in each of the quadrants, corresponding to their levels of power and interest. The next step is to decide who needs the most attention. In general, the business people who use this model would say that you should expend most of your energy on the people who can be most helpful, i.

Powerful people with the highest interest are most important, followed by those with power and less interest. Those in the lower right quadrant — high interest, less power — come next, with those with low interest and low power coming last. Some of those, at least before the effort begins, may be in the lower left quadrant of the grid. They may be too involved in trying to survive — either financially or physically — from day to day to think about an effort to change their situation.

So…your stakeholder management depends on what your purpose is in involving stakeholders. If your purpose is to marshal support for the effort or policy change, then each group — each quadrant of the grid — calls for one kind of attention. If your purpose is primarily participatory, then each quadrant calls for another kind of attention. Stakeholder management for marshaling support for the effort, especially for advocacy or policy change:.

When people who could be promoters are negative, the major task is to convert them. Thus, they need to be treated as potential allies, and their concerns should be addressed to the extent possible without compromising the effort. If they begin to voice opposition, then your first attempt might be at conversion or neutralization, rather than battle. While this formulation is no more compelling than other similar ones, it has the advantage of giving a label to each quadrant.

Stakeholder management for developing a participatory process or including marginalized populations:. Organizations must cultivate supporters in support of any effort.

Deciding whom to cultivate by analyzing how much they can help is a standard part of health and community service work, as well as of advocacy. Stakeholder management in that situation means trying to attract representatives of all stakeholders, and treating them all as equals and colleagues, while at the same time leveling the field as much as possible by providing training and support to those who need it.

The four-cell grid is still useful here, but the attention given to those in each quadrant will be different from that in the other model. Here, the largest amount of attention may go to the people in the two lower quadrants, since those with little power often have less experience in such areas as meeting and planning, and less confidence in their ability to engage in them. A successful participatory process may require that the people in the upper right quadrant — the promoters — understand and buy into the process fully.

They can then help to bring stakeholders in the other positions on board, and to encourage them to participate in planning, implementing, and evaluating the effort. That means working with the promoters to explain the concept of participation fully and to convince them that pulling all stakeholders in is the best way to accomplish your — and their — goals.

They might also serve as mentors or partners to those who are not used to having seats at the table. Obviously, not all stakeholders in the lower two quadrants are low-income, unused to managing things, or lacking in educational and organizational skills. Others may have no influence in this particular situation, though they may have a great deal in other circumstances. Very often, however, those who do lack skills and experience find themselves in those two lower quadrants.

That may be one aspect of stakeholder management, and it may help to move them into positions of more influence and teach them how to exercise it. Often, the stories of those who have or will benefit from the effort can be effective motivators for people who might otherwise be indifferent. Such stories are particularly powerful if the listeners know the people involved, but never suspected the difficulties they face.

If the latents become involved, their influence can help to greatly strengthen the effort. The more people, groups, institutions, and organizations with influence that are involved, the greater the chances are for success. The task with latents is to convince them that they are true stakeholders, and that the effort will benefit them either directly or indirectly.

Bringing people and organizations into the process and moving them toward the upper right quadrant of the stakeholder grid generally demands that you keep them involved and informed by:. Evaluation of the stakeholder process should be an integral part of the overall evaluation of the effort, and stakeholders themselves should be involved in developing that evaluation.

The answers to these and similar questions could both help you improve the current effort and make a big difference the next time — and there will be a next time — you involve stakeholders.

That brings us to the final piece of working with stakeholders. As with any other community building activity, you have to keep at it indefinitely, or at least as long as the effort goes on. New stakeholders may need to be brought in as time goes on.

Old ones may cease to be actual stakeholders, but may retain an interest in the effort and may therefore continue to be included. Understanding and engaging stakeholders can be tremendously helpful to your effort, but only if it results in their ownership of it and long-term commitment to it. And that depends on your continuing attention. Stakeholders of an effort are those who have a vested interest in it, either as those who develop and conduct it, or as those whom it affects directly or indirectly.

Managing stakeholders — keeping them involved and supportive — can be made easier by stakeholder analysis, a method of determining their levels of interest in and influence over the effort. Once you have that information, you can then decide on the appropriate approach for each individual and group. Depending on your goals for the effort, you may either focus on those with the most interest and influence, or on those who are most affected by the effort. As with any community building activity, work with stakeholders has to continue for the long term in order to attain the level of participation and support you need for a successful effort.

Mind Tools - Stakeholder Analysis: Winning Support for Your Projects is a business-oriented method, but can be applied elsewhere as well. Reference for Business - Stakeholders is an article on stakeholder perspective from Reference for Business, Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed. Business oriented. World Bank - Stakeholders provides perspective on stakeholder analysis. Skip to main content. Toggle navigation Navigation. Encouraging Involvement in Community Work » Section 8. Chapter 7. Chapter 7 Sections Section 1.

Methods of Contacting Potential Participants Section 4. Writing Letters to Potential Participants Section 5. Involving Key Influentials in the Initiative Section 7. Identifying and Analyzing Stakeholders and Their Interests. The Tool Box needs your help to remain available. Toggle navigation Chapter Sections. Section 1.