How stakeholder analysis can be mobilized with actor-network theory to identify actors

Abstract

Actor-network theory studies provide detailed accounts of how human and nonhuman actors gradually form stable actor networks. However, due to their focus on a particular context, there is little generic guidance on how such relevant actors can be identified when a different research context is under study. The principles of (human) stakeholder behavior presented in this paper guide the identification of human stakeholders through an iterative, interpretive, dynamic and context-contingent process. We show how they can be adopted and extended to include the identification of nonhuman actants as well. Thus, we argue that they can be instrumental in providing a generic, context-free guidance to stakeholder identification that is currently missing from ANT studies. © 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.