Stakeholders seeking to influence the strategic aims and objectives
Stakeholder analysis
‘Stakeholders’ is a generic term for all people who have an interest in the well being of an area. This includes partners, residents, visitors, businesses, government, public service and voluntary organisations.
Stakeholder analysis can be used to identify who should be engaged with as part of the Equality impact assessment process, and is useful to ensure that key stakeholders have not been forgotten.
The full process has many steps and stages and the purpose is to:
· Identify stakeholders interests in relation to problems that the project is seeking to address
· Identify conflicts of interest between stakeholders and funding committees
· Help identify relations between stakeholders which can be built upon to form ‘coalitions of support’
· Help assess appropriate types of participation by different stakeholders
However, the process always starts with mapping the importance and influence of the stakeholders.
Stakeholders
This term has entered the workplace and has become jargon. Organisations interpret ‘stakeholders’ in different ways – many think stakeholders are other organisations that they work with, so we see statements like: “we will work with our stakeholders, our staff and our clients”. All of these are stakeholders. Stakeholders are: persons, groups or institutions that are interested in a project and/or may influence its outcomes. Stakeholders can be put into three general categories:
1. Primary stakeholders are those ultimately affected, either positively or negatively by the project.
2. Secondary stakeholders are the ‘intermediaries’, that is, persons or organisations in the project delivery process.
3. Key stakeholders (who can also belong to the first two groups) have significant influence or importance in a project.
Influence and importance
Once a list of possible stakeholders has been created (this can be grouped into coalitions) it is...