Dynamic Stakeholder Analysis Through Process Mapping

Abstract

Identification of stakeholders and their importance is critical to the design of accountability and performance management systems. Conventional stakeholder analysis approaches provide a static view of stakeholders and overlook that accountability is a dynamic process encompassing multiple temporally separated (or distinct) stages. We approach stakeholder analysis from a process perspective to ensure a more complete identification of stakeholders and to capture the dynamic nature of stakeholder emergence, retirement, and changes in relative importance. We used a participatory action research methodology to investigate contracting services in a community health setting and employed process mapping to reveal contracting activities undertaken in sequential stages of Deming's Plan–Do–Check–Act (PDCA) cycle. Stakeholders engage at different stages with different activities of a process so that in multi-stage processes, stakeholder analysis needs to be repeated at each stage and is specific to each stage. Our use of the PDCA is broader than traditional applications and provides a suitable framework for a more complete identification of stakeholders across the entire process while aligning well with accountability and management control notions. The contribution is an approach that not only better identifies stakeholders but also recognizes the dynamics of multi-stage processes for stakeholder interest and influence. The recurring nature of many processes (such as contracting) implies that roles remain the same even if an organization is restructured so that process mapping will still identify roles and stakeholders. This approach can be used by other organizations to better identify stakeholders and their dynamics in the planning and delivery processes.