stakeholder analysis example case study

• Contact sales

Start free trial

Stakeholder Analysis 101 (Example & Template Included)

A stakeholder is anyone who has a vested interest in a project. If your stakeholders aren’t satisfied with the results of a project, you’ve failed. Therefore, in order to successfully complete a project, it’s essential to gain a clear understanding of who your stakeholders are, what their expectations are and what motivates them. This process is called stakeholder analysis.

What Is Stakeholder Analysis?

Stakeholder analysis identifies and prioritizes stakeholders before the project begins. It organizes stakeholders into groups according to how much they participate in the project, what their interest level is and how much influence they have. Once these people are identified and organized, then you must figure out the best way to involve each stakeholder in the project, including the best channels for communication based on their needs.

Get your free

Stakeholder Analysis Template

Use this free Stakeholder Analysis Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Communication is key to stakeholder analysis because stakeholders must buy into and approve the project, and this can only be done with timely information and visibility into the project. The former puts the project in context while the latter builds trust. All this leads to the project being in strategic alignment with stakeholders and the overall business goals of the company.

Why Is Stakeholder Analysis Important?

Stakeholder analysis is a way to get help from key project players. Once you determine who these key stakeholders are, then you can bring them into the project kickoff meeting to help align the project with strategic objectives. Their experience helps a project avoid pitfalls and getting their help builds stronger relationships. They can also help with conflict resolution during the project execution.

Stakeholders are also crucial for delivering the resources you need to get the project done right. When there is good communication between a stakeholder and a project manager, then the stakeholder can help deliver the people, tools and other resources necessary to get the project done.

The process of going through stakeholder analysis is also a way to build a relationship of trust with stakeholders. Once you have a line of communication open with stakeholders, develop a good rapport and show transparency in the project, you encourage trust. These elements should be considered in your stakeholder management plan .

Project management software helps keep the lines of communication open between project managers and stakeholders. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that has customizable reports that are easy to share with stakeholders to keep them updated. After you do the stakeholder analysis, use filtered status reports or portfolio reports to manage stakeholder expectations. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Stakeholder Analysis Steps

Stakeholder analysis uses a technique called stakeholder mapping. Before starting, you first must decide on the focus of the project. This will determine who is most important in terms of stakeholders. Once that is determined, then you can download our free stakeholder map template and follow these steps.

1. List the Stakeholders

As noted above, stakeholders come in all shapes and sizes. While it’s important to narrow the focus that comes in later. At this point, you want to list everyone who is a stakeholder , no matter the level of their significance to the project. As you list your stakeholders, keep in mind that they fall into two main categories: those who are affected by the project and those who contribute to it.

For example, the project manager and the team are contributors to the project, while the end-user is someone who is affected by it. It’s possible that stakeholders fall into both categories. The better this list is, the less likely you’ll be delayed or sidetracked during the project.

2. Analyze Stakeholders

What are the roles and expectations of all those stakeholders that you have listed above? Some stakeholders are going to have more importance to the project and their expectations will have more of an impact than others. This is where you make those determinations.

You can discern this by using an influence-interest matrix, which is a box broken into four sections. You should place your stakeholders in one of the four boxes based on their interest and influence levels.

The top of the box is broken into two sections: keep informed and manage closely. The lower half of the box is also broken into two sections: minimal contact and keep satisfied. Anyone placed to the right of the box has more influence, while anyone placed near the top of the box has more interest. If a stakeholder is placed in the top right, then they have a lot of interest and influence, making them important players in the project.

3. Prioritize Stakeholders

Once you have a thorough list, you can begin prioritizing them by importance to the project. Decide who among them has the most influence on the project plan and is affected by it. You can use the influence-interest matrix again to help with prioritizing stakeholders.

Don’t forget that the status of your stakeholders is not static, they can change throughout the course of the project. Stakeholder analysis is not a one-time thing but is a process that should continue throughout the project.

4. Engage Stakeholders

Finally, with the information created in your stakeholder map, you figure out how to engage your stakeholders. This is the process by which you win over stakeholders, and get their understanding and support to help fuel the project, putting it on the right course. This leads to a communication plan that outlines the channel and frequency of communications between you and each stakeholder. You can use our communication plan template to get started.

ProjectManager has dozens of free project management templates for Excel and Word that can help manage projects throughout their life cycle. Use our free stakeholder analysis template for Excel to capture all the pertinent information you need to manage stakeholders’ expectations.

Stakeholder Analysis Example

To better understand what stakeholder analysis is look at a stakeholder analysis example. We’ll keep it simple, say hiring a contractor to build a playhouse for your child.

First, you want to list all the stakeholders, which includes the owner, you, and your child, but also the contractor you’ve hired for the project. Now, analyze those stakeholders. You have a high influence on the project and make the decisions, while your child has a medium influence as you want to build something the child will like. The contractor isn’t a decision-maker but has a high influence on the execution of the project.

Prioritize these stakeholders, such as you as owner will have the highest priority, the contractor next and the child last. In terms of engagement, you and the contractor will likely want to have daily discussions on the progress of the project. The child is probably only interested in the final delivery.

Stakeholder Analysis Tools

To excel at stakeholder analysis, you’ll need the proper tools. They will help you identify, prioritize and communicate with your stakeholders. Here are some that we recommend.

Stakeholder Map or Power/Interest Grid

A stakeholder map is a matrix that helps to categorize stakeholders. It helps with the analysis and management of stakeholders by mapping them to a grip that shows their power and interest in the project.

Stakeholder Knowledge Base Chart

This stakeholder analysis tool maps stakeholders based on their knowledge of the project and their attitude toward the project. It’s a box divided into four quadrants: aware/opposition, aware/support, ignorant, opposition and ignorant/support.

Stakeholder Salience Model

This model is used to define how much priority and attention a project manager should give to competing stakeholder claims. It does this by measuring each stakeholder’s power, legitimacy and urgency.

Stakeholder Onion Diagram

This analytical tool is used to figure out who are the stakeholders in the project and how each of the stakeholders’ roles interacts with the project . Like an onion, there’s a process or product at the center that’s surrounded by layers of stakeholders.

RACI Matrix

RACI is an acronym that stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. This matrix then will define each stakeholder as one of those four letters in terms of activities or decision-making.

How ProjectManager Helps With Stakeholder Management

Once you’ve identified and analyzed your stakeholders, you’re going to have to work with them. That’s where ProjectManager comes in. Our award-winning project management software has all the tools you need to manage your projects and keep your stakeholders engaged.

Naturally, stakeholders have an interest in the project. But, that doesn’t mean you have to give them every detail. Sometimes it’s the big picture that counts. ProjectManager has a real-time dashboard that paints the project in broad strokes, such as task progress, costs and project variance. These colorful graphs and charts make it easy to see where the project is right now.

Unlimited File Storage

Projects make paperwork. Stakeholders like those business cases and want to have access to them. ProjectManager has unlimited file storage, so add as many project-related documents and images as you like. Everything is in one place and easy to find. Keep stakeholders happy.

ProjectManager is online project management software that helps project managers manage their projects, teams and stakeholders. With planning, tracking and reporting tools, managers and teams are prepared for every project phase.  See how ProjectManager can support you and your stakeholders with this free 30-day trial.

Deliver your projects on time and under budget

Start planning your projects.

Stakeholder Analysis, Project Management templates and advice

• A complete IT software project Stakeholder Analysis
• Complete Construction Project Stakeholder Map
• Example Stakeholder Management Plan
• Stakeholder Engagement Plan
• Stakeholder Analysis & Stakeholder Salience Templates
• Communication & Reporting Plan
• Sample text to copy and paste for your assignment or project

Stakeholder analysis example

Software project stakeholder case study.

• Chief Information Officer(CIO)
• Change Manager
• Project Manager
• Outsourced call-center managers
• Networking & security
• Web standards
• Training Manager
• Legacy systems owners
• Outsourced call-center staff

Example Stakeholder Analysis for a Software Project

Influence lines between stakeholders

If we now consider how the stakeholders can influence each other we find useful intelligence that can help drive the stakeholder engagement strategy. We can do this by adding lines that indicate how certain stakeholders influence other stakeholders. The influence lines for the CRM project are shown below. You will probably notice that they are specific to the organization and personalities involved. Influence lines can clearly never be drawn between roles or ‘reused’ for other projects - there are so many different factors involved.

Stakeholder Analysis with Influence lines

Download this Example Stakeholder Analysis

Zip file download with powerpoint version .ppt .pptx, zip file download with pdf version, stakeholder analysis resources.

• Stakeholder analysis templates in Word, Visio and Excel.
• Basic Stakeholder Analysis Method
• BPM Stakeholder Analysis
• Career Stakeholder Analysis
• Stakeholder Analysis - keeping stakeholders happy
• Stakeholder Analysis Keyplayers
• Stakeholder Analysis Questions
• Stakeholder Salience
• Stakeholder Analysis Software
• Stakeholder Analysis Video

Bibliography for stakeholder analysis example

Share this image.

Chapter 5. Stakeholder Management

5.2 Stakeholder Analysis

After the initial assessment has been completed, stakeholder prioritization can occur. A power/interest grid would be a very helpful tool for prioritization (Figure 5.1). It helps project managers categorize stakeholders and create effective communication strategies for each category of stakeholder on the project. This tool is one of the most common techniques utilized to group stakeholders according to their level of authority (power) and their level of concern about the project’s activities and outcomes (interest) [1] . Besides the power/interest grid, other techniques can be used such as power/influence grid, impact/influence grid, stakeholder cube, and salience model. In this book, we will not cover these techniques.

The stakeholder power/interest grid is a two-dimensional matrix with four quadrants. Power refers to the authority of stakeholders through which they can affect the course of activities and decisions and may block or facilitate and accelerate them. Interest refers to stakeholders’ level of concern about the project’s activities and outcomes, and how they are affected by them, either negative or positive. While carrying out the activities to identify stakeholders, we should make our research and investigation thoroughly to determine and prioritize the stakeholders. Some stakeholders would have more power and interest in our project. Therefore, we should identify them, and create a strategy to engage them during the project. These strategies have been indicated in Figure 5.1 for each quadrant based on the level of power and interest.

Properties of each quadrant with the potential stakeholder inside them have been described below:

• High power – High interest: These stakeholders are decision-makers and have the biggest impact on the project’s success and hence we must closely manage their expectations [2] . We should work closely with them to ensure that they agree with and support the change [3] . The project sponsor, project manager, and the team can be included in this quadrant.
• High power – Low Interest: These stakeholders need to be kept satisfied even though they aren’t interested because they yield power. This type of stakeholders should be dealt with cautiously as well since they may use their power in a not desired way in the project if they become unsatisfied. Government and regulatory agencies which inspect the quality of your work in compliance with legal provisions and standards can be included in this quadrant.
• Low power – High interest: We should keep these stakeholders adequately informed and talk to them to ensure that no major issues are arising. They are likely to be very concerned and may feel anxious about a lack of control. They can often be very helpful with the detail of your project. Our customers or end-users who are willing to purchase the outcome of the project (e.g., a product or a service) can be included in this quadrant.
• Low power – Low interest: We should monitor these stakeholders, but do not bore them with excessive communication. The public and the customers who are not willing to purchase our products can be included in this quadrant. We can send them newsletters once every month, but not every week. We should monitor their interest and power level in case they may change.

When considering a stakeholder’s interest, we should assess the following:

• How is their performance evaluated?
• Will their performance be impacted by the project and/or the project’s outcomes?
• Are they needed to help produce the project’s outcomes?

When considering a stakeholder’s power, we should assess the following:

• What position do they currently hold in our organization or their organizations?
• How much authority does this position afford them over the project?
• Can they influence people in positions of high power?

Tools such as stakeholder power/interest grid help project managers prioritize stakeholders. Some stakeholders have little interest and little power in a project and as a result, do not require as much contact from the project team. Understanding who these stakeholders are allows the project team to spend more time with the stakeholders that have a significant interest in the project and who exert significant influence over the project. Project teams assess the interest and power of project stakeholders by researching their current positions and their actions in previous change initiatives, and by directly speaking with them about the project.

Below, let’s consider a fictitious case study of a vehicle rental company to elaborate on the stakeholder power/interest grid.

5.2.1        Case Study 5.1: A Vehicle Rental Company’s Project for their Booking System

Our car rental company, Best Rental Company Worldwide (BRCW), has a serious problem. Our booking system crashes frequently. The employees working in the relevant departments, branches, and the call center cannot process the information properly. Besides, there are significant errors in scheduling and pricing while individual and corporate customers are renting vehicles on the company’s website, and when they reach the call center to book a vehicle. The company’s IT director, who is CTO (Chief Technology Officer), asked us to initiate a project that would address the problems, and solve them. First, we should create a business case that should investigate the problem thoroughly. We should figure out the underlying reasons. In order to dig into the reasons, we should first identify the stakeholders to whom we should consult to learn what they experience with the current system, and what their concerns and expectations are. Our team targets to develop a new booking module in the ERP system, a website, and a mobile application our customers will access and use to book vehicles. We identified the stakeholders as follows:

• Project manager
• Project team members
• Project sponsor: IT Director – Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
• Steering Committee (composed of car rental company managers)
• IT Department
• HR Department
• Sales Department
• Marketing Department
• Maintenance / Repair Department
• Call Center and its managers and employees
• Branches across the USA (and their managers and employees)
• Branches outside the USA
• Individual Customers
• Organizational Customers (Corporates that rent vehicles based on a contract with BRCW)
• Insurance companies
• Travel agencies (including e-commerce agencies such as Expedia)
• Vehicle manufacturers
• Suppliers of vehicle spare parts and consumables for offices at the central units and branches
• Government agencies (e.g., Department of Transportation, US Environmental Protection Agency)
• Google Play store (for Android phones and tablets) and App Store (for Apple phones and tablets)
• Not-for-profit organizations (e.g., associations that were established to reduce carbon emissions)

Project sponsor, project manager, project team members, steering committee, IT, sales, marketing and maintenance/repair departments, call center, and branches all across the USA are our internal stakeholders that are inside our company, BRCW. Although it may look counterintuitive to include the manager and team members, they are also stakeholders. Indeed, they are the most important stakeholders who have a strong impact on project activities, milestones, decisions, deliverables, outcomes, and the overall project.

5.2.1.1  Project Sponsor

The project sponsor is typically the most powerful stakeholder. In our case, CTO is the sponsor. Sponsors have high power and high interest. They are the decision-makers and act as a supervisor and controller of the project. Sponsors often initiate the project by signing off and approving the project charter and authorizing the project manager to form and lead the team, start planning, define the scope, activities, schedule, and risks, and allocate and utilize the budget and resources. A sponsor is the authority superior to the project manager inside the organization and acts as a supervisor and facilitator during the project. A sponsor releases the budget for the team to use for the project activities. If the project client is one of the units of the organization, that is an internal client, the project sponsor also becomes the funder. If the client is outside the organization, this external client becomes the funder while the sponsor should be still inside the organization that is implementing the project. A legal contract is created between the organization (where the project sponsor, project manager, and team are), and the external client (funder). While the contract is a legally binding agreement, we still need a project charter that should be signed by the sponsor who is in our organization where the team resides. The charter should be based on the contract, and it regulates the requirements and resource allocations on the organization’s side. As discussed in Chapter 3 regarding the project charter, the project sponsor can be referred to as the “initiating sponsor.” They have the authority to start and stop the project and will support the achievement of project objectives by removing the barriers to success. They can be regarded as the “external champion” because they often serve as the last escalation point when the project team needs support bringing an off-track project back on track. Successful project teams know how to leverage the power and position of the project sponsor and will proactively ask them to deliver influencing communications throughout the organization in order to maintain the project’s momentum and high morale within the team. Project sponsors can assign one or more sustaining sponsors to act as the “internal champion(s)” of the project. These sponsors are often leaders of the internal departments that are most affected by the project, such as a marketing manager or human resources manager. When the project sponsor selects the sustaining sponsor(s), one of their goals is to ensure that the project team frequently considers the organizational impacts of the changes being introduced. By keeping the sustaining sponsor(s) actively engaged in the project, they will ensure their teams are intently participating in the project and identifying the operational impacts that must be considered in order for the change to be sustained once the project has been completed.

5.2.1.2  Project Manager and Project Team

The project manager and the team members have high power and high interest since they are responsible for conducting all the teamwork and project activities, and they define and sequence activities, estimate their duration, budget, and resources, identify resources and allocate them, identify and manage risks, and monitor and control all project activities. They are those who are held accountable in the first place for the success of the project. Project managers have to deal with stakeholders external to the organization as well as the internal environment, certainly more complex than what a manager in an internal environment faces. For example, suppliers who are late in delivering crucial parts may blow the project schedule. To compound the problem, project managers generally have little or no direct control over any of these stakeholders. Therefore, it is a challenging process for project managers and the team. We will discuss team management in more detail in Chapter 6.

5.2.1.3  Top Management and Steering Committee

Top management may include the president of the company, vice-presidents, directors, division managers, and the corporate operating committee. They direct the strategy and development of the organization. Project managers should have top management support, which means it will be easier to recruit the best staff to carry out the project and acquire needed material and resources. Moreover, visibility can enhance a project manager’s professional standing in the company. On the minus side, failure can be quite dramatic and visible to all, and if the project is large as is in our case and expensive, the cost of failure will be more substantial than for a smaller, less visible project. Therefore, while dealing with top management, project managers should develop in-depth plans and major milestones that must be approved by top management during the planning and design phases of the project. They should ask top management associated with the project for their information reporting needs and frequency. They should also develop a status reporting methodology to be distributed on a scheduled basis, and keep them informed of project risks and potential impacts at all times. In our case study, the steering committee which is composed of top managers and their representatives plays a crucial role during the project.

5.2.1.4  Functional Departments

In our case study, we have functional departments, which are the IT, sales, marketing, and maintenance/repair departments as well as branches all across the USA. In general, central functional units have more authority than the regional offices have. All these units have managers and employees at various hierarchical levels. Among the central units, the IT department is the one that we should work with more closely since the project is directly related to their responsibilities, and most of the human and physical resources we need for the project activities reside in the IT department. Therefore, the IT department has high power and high interest. The project also needs human resources from the sales, marketing, and maintenance departments. We need to consult subject matter experts in these departments. Therefore, these department heads control their resources, and we rely on them. If we have a good relationship with them, they may be able to consistently provide the best staff and the best equipment for our project. Employees from these departments may be in our core team, or they may attend the project activities. Since the booking system directly affects their day-to-day operations, they have a higher interest. However, their power level may not be very high all the time. It may fluctuate from moderately high levels to lower interest levels though it is generally not very low.

5.2.1.5  Internal Customers: Branches and Call Center

The branches in our case, and also the call center, are the internal customers of our project. They will be the end-users of the new ERP module when our individual customers and employers of our organizational customers visit the branches or call the call center to book a vehicle or to talk about another issue related to the booking (e.g., complaints, roadside assistance). These two categories of internal customers are those who hold the power to accept or reject the deliverables of activities and the overall project when completed. However, they are generally represented by their managers, a product owner, or an inspection and acceptance committee who have high power and naturally very high interest. Therefore, we should place them in the quadrant that makes us manage them closely. Early in the relationship, the project manager will need to negotiate, clarify, and document project specifications and deliverables. After the project begins, the project manager must stay tuned in to the customer’s concerns and issues and keep the customer informed. If call center agents don’t find the new system user-friendly and easy to use, they may resist using it. They must be kept informed frequently, and their feedback should be sought especially in critical decisions. Their resistance and dissatisfaction may lead to rework, which may cause the project to have budget overruns and schedule slippages. This is why continuous user involvement and feedback are crucial during the project to minimize the risk of unacceptance.

While dealing with internal customers, the project manager and the team should pay attention to ensuring clarity about what stakeholders, in particular customers, want precisely. This is a part of product and project scope management. Project managers should assign business and/or systems analysts who can elicit requirements utilizing techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus group meetings, workshops, root and cause analysis, and document analysis. Project managers should be aware of any issues regarding the lack of documentation for what is wanted, lack of knowledge of the customer’s organization and operating characteristics, unrealistic deadlines, budgets, or specifications requested by the customer, hesitancy of the customer to sign off on the project or accept responsibility for decisions, and changes in project scope. As explicated in Chapter 3 “Project Initiation” and Chapter 4 “Project Planning”, project managers should address the needs and expectations of stakeholders such as customers, clients, or owners, and be sure to do the following:

• Learn the organization’s organizational structure, culture, buzzwords, and business.
• Clarify all project requirements and specifications in a written agreement.
• Specify a change procedure clearly in change management and configuration management plans.
• Establish the project manager as the focal point of communications in the project organization.

5.2.1.6  External Customers

Providing clarity about what stakeholders want precisely, as explained above for internal customers, is true for external customers too. Business and/or systems analysts should also elicit requirements from external customers by utilizing techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus group meetings, workshops, root and cause analysis, and document analysis. External customers are outside our organization. Therefore, they are within the external stakeholders. In our case, external customers are individual customers (people who rent vehicles for leisure or work) and organizational customers (corporates that rent vehicles based on a contract). When we finalize our project, they can book the rental vehicles on our website and mobile app, call the call center to reserve a vehicle or talk about another issue related to the booking (e.g., complaints, roadside assistance) or they can visit a branch to reserve, pick up or return a rental vehicle. Organizational customers, in general, have a contractual relationship with our company as they regularly and frequently rent vehicles with better prices and conditions. They will be interested in our new booking system since a more effective system helps them have a smoother process with minimum flaws. Most of the individual customers may not be frequent customers. They may pursue lower prices by comparing the prices based on the vehicle type. Therefore, their interest in our new system may not be high most of the time. We can name them as occasional individual customers. However, the customers who rent their vehicles from our company regularly may be interested in our project, and they may be willing to receive newsletters, for example, once every month in their email accounts. The power level for both individual and organizational customers would be low since they don’t have the authority and decision-making authority to significantly affect the course of the project (Figure 5.2).

5.2.1.7  External Stakeholders

In our case, individual customers (see 5.2.1.6), organizational customers (see 5.2.1.6), mobile app stores, insurance companies, travel agencies (including e-commerce agencies), vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations are our external stakeholders.

An important stakeholder group in our case would be two common mobile application stores – Android’s Google Play and Apple’s App Store. Our mobile app developers and testers will use their SDKs (Software Development Kits), and they should authenticate the app before it can be used by the customers on their smartphones. There will be also standards such as regarding privacy and security that we need to comply with. Thus, these two stores will have high power in our project. However, their interest level may not be high as they are not impacted by this project and its outcomes. We should keep them satisfied by complying with their standards, and terms and conditions.

Government and regulatory agencies are generally considered to have high power and low interest if they have an inspection and approval authority in the project. Project managers working in certain heavily regulated environments (e.g., pharmaceutical, banking, or military industries) will have to deal with government regulators and departments. These can include all or some levels of government from municipal, provincial, federal, to international. Besides, constructors are subject to permits and inspections from the local (city and county offices such as Public Works, Fire, and Health Departments) and federal agencies regarding the quality and legal standards they need to adhere to in their constructions (e.g., building permits, fire evacuation plan, fire and smoke equipment, safety). This is why these agencies’ power level is high. In our case, government agencies were listed as the Department of Transportation and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Although these agencies may perform controls and inspections, and release permits for our operations, they may not have power and interest in our booking system. Thus, they are inside the low-power and low-interest quadrant in Figure 5.2. If there is a function or condition that need to be added to our system, and these agencies should approve before we make the system available, then we can include them inside the high-power and low-interest quadrant.

In our booking system project, we also have not-for-profit organizations such as associations that were established to reduce carbon emissions. Similar to government agencies in our case, these organizations may not have power in our project. However, they may have a low or moderate level of interest since the system could include the fuel efficiency rates for each car. In Figure 5.2, they were placed within the low-power and low-interest quadrant.

Insurance companies and travel agencies may be interested in our new booking system since some of them have an ongoing contractual relationship with our company. When a customer wants to rent a vehicle, they can select an insurance plan during their rental time. Travel agencies, and/or travel websites (e.g., Expedia, Priceline) communicate with our company’s system to check the availability of our rental cars. Therefore, both insurance companies and travel agencies may be interested in our project. However, their power level would be at a low level as they don’t have the decision-making authority to affect the project activities.

Another stakeholder would be vehicle manufacturers from which our company, BRCW, purchases the vehicles to rent to the customers. Although they have a high interest in our vehicle portfolio, and they have an ongoing relationship with our company, they may not have a high-level interest in the booking system. Indeed, vehicle manufacturers prefer their vehicles to appear in the booking system with high-quality pictures and accurate technical information. This is why they may have a moderate level of interest in our booking system. They would be willing to see the same look and feel or the picture and information quality available in our current system. Therefore, they were placed in the low-power and high-interest quadrant in Figure 5.2. We can also use the maintenance and service points of these vehicle manufacturers. However, this wouldn’t be related to the booking system.

Another stakeholder, suppliers of vehicle spare parts and consumables for offices at the central units and branches, wouldn’t have a high interest in our booking system. They may have a moderate level of interest in the functions and conditions in our ERP module if spare parts and consumables are included. Neither do they have power in our project. Many projects heavily depend on goods provided by outside suppliers. This is true for example of construction projects where lumber, nails, brick, and mortar come from outside suppliers. If the supplied goods are delivered late or in short supply or of poor quality or if the price is greater than originally quoted, the project may suffer. Therefore, their interest level would be high. However, in our case, their interest level wouldn’t be high. Hence, they were replaced in the low-power and low-interest quadrant in Figure 5.2.

We didn’t include any contractors in our case study. However, there are times when organizations don’t have in-house expertise. Thus, available resources and work is farmed out to contractors or subcontractors for the whole project or some of the activities. In a construction project, these subcontractors may be consultants, electricians, carpenters, and architects. Managing them requires many of the skills needed to manage full-time project team members. We may have problems with them regarding the quality of the work, cost overruns, and schedule slippage.

5.2.2        Case Study 5.2: Grocery LLC’s Mobile-Commerce Project

In Chapter 3 of this textbook, we created a project charter in the initiation phase of Grocery LLC’s mobile e-commerce project. The stakeholders specified in this charter under “9. Key Stakeholder List” are below. Besides, project team members who are indicated under “12. Project Team” in Chapter 3 have been included in the list below.

• Project manager (Senior Systems Analyst)
• Project manager: Senior systems analyst
• Two systems (business) analysts
• Two UI/UX designers
• Three developers (including Android and IOS developers, and the backend developer)
• Two testers (quality assurance engineers)
• Two sales and marketing experts
• Project sponsor (Chief Operations Officer – COO)
• Product owner (The representative from the operational department who was assigned by the COO)
• Store managers and employees
• Online customers
• Customers who visit the stores in person
• Government agencies that announce the pandemic restrictions
• Google Play and App Store for the mobile application

The stakeholders have been placed on the grid as illustrated in Figure 5.3. Different from Figure 5.2, this grid shows each stakeholder with dots inside their quadrants. We should always keep in mind that the location of each dot should be justified, and they don’t indicate a GPS location so that they provide a comparison of their locations with other stakeholders.

High Power – High Interest Quadrant

We have explained in Case Study 1.1 that the project sponsor, project manager, and project team are placed in this quadrant. The product owner in the m-commerce project of Grocery LLC is a representative from the operational department who was assigned by the COO. This person represents the interests of the internal client, and the priority of the product specification is managed and directed by this person. Therefore, the product owner has a high authority to affect the course of the project, and naturally, their interest is at a very high level from the very beginning to the very end of the project, extending beyond the completion of the project. Let’s assume that two store managers will be assigned to the inspection committee that will assess the performance measures of the mobile application to grant acceptance. In any case, whether they are at the committee or not, store managers are directly affected by the activities and outcome of this project. Finally, the IT Department will be the main functional unit that will coordinate this project’s technical activities (programming, testing, deployment), and assign systems (business) analysts, UI/UX designers, developers (including Android and IOS developers, and the backend developer), and testers if these human resources are available in this department. If they are not available, the IT department will start a recruitment process through the HR department.

High Power – Low Interest Quadrant

Similar to Case Study 1.1, mobile application stores, Android’s Google Play and Apple’s App Store, would have high power in this project. Developers and testers in this project will use their SDKs (Software Development Kits), and they should authenticate the app before it can be used by the customers on their smartphones. Thus, we should keep them satisfied by complying with their standards, and terms and conditions. During the project, we should keep an eye on the announcements made by the government agencies regarding the pandemic. Modifications or new restrictions may affect the ongoing activities, and challenge the allocation of human and physical resources. The fourth stakeholder in this quadrant would be the HR department. Although the HR department may not have high interest, their power level could be higher due to the fact that the recruitment process should be carried out through them as explained above in the “high power – high interest quadrant”.

Low Power – High Interest Quadrant

As indicated in the “high power – high interest quadrant”, store managers’ interest will be high as their stores will need to manage the online orders. They will also be interested in the features of this application and its store interface since the store employees will need a user-friendly application to process the orders smoothly. Therefore, employees are expected to have a high-level interest in this project. Although both managers’ and employees’ power to influence the project activities and outcomes wouldn’t be high, we can still expect a moderate level of power because of their key role in the process. In the headquarters of Grocery LLC, sales and marketing departments are expected to have a high interest in this project. Actually, both departments will provide human resources directly in the project team. Besides, the mobile application’s content and its marketing tools will be managed by these two departments. Finally, we can place online customers in this quadrant as the end-users of the mobile app. The project team should elicit these stakeholders’ expectations from the app while creating, validating, and finalizing the requirements of the app.

Low power – Low Interest Quadrant

In this case study, we have two stakeholder groups in this quadrant. Suppliers have a key and frequent relationship with the grocery chain. However, their interest would be mostly on the supply chain management system through which they communicate with the chain and the intermediaries to dispatch the items ordered by the stores. Increased sales by means of the mobile app would benefit suppliers. However, the relationship with the grocery chain depends on the agreements and contracts independent of the mobile application. Nevertheless, we can still expect a moderate level of interest in this project. The second stakeholder group in this project would be customers who prefer visiting the stores in person, and hence who don’t think of using the mobile app. Their interest level can be at a minimum level.

5.2.3        Stakeholder Register

In order to have a better picture of stakeholders, we should have a stakeholder register accompanied by the power/interest grid we delineated above. This register should include information about all our stakeholders, both key and those with low interest and low power. Table 5.1 illustrates an example of a stakeholder register based on our case study about a rental vehicle booking system implemented at BRCW.

Level of support (either current or desired) can be evaluated in five levels [4] :

• Supports Actively: Anticipates and feels the need for change, actively works with the project team.
• Supports: Anticipates and feels the need for change, but does not involve in the project team.
• Neutral – Neither supporting nor opposing.
• Opposes – Neither feels the need for change nor tries to prevent the change.
• Opposes Actively – Doesn’t see the need for change, actively working to prevent the change.

In some cases, it isn’t uncommon for project managers to be working with stakeholders that are not supportive of the project. They may feel the project is not going to benefit them or their organizations. They may also resist making the changes that are necessary to support the project’s outcomes. Some stakeholders are very upfront about their resistance and others are not. In these situations, the project sponsor may be integral to winning these stakeholders over. Knowing when to tactfully involve others in stakeholder management is another key success factor for effective project management.

Stakeholders are critical factors to be taken into account while identifying the risks. Their risk rating helps the team determine individual and overall project risks. The project manager and the team should use judgment in deciding how to handle each stakeholder by evaluating their current and desired support level, the potential impact on the project activities, decisions and outcomes, and their issues and concerns regarding the project and other stakeholders. The role of stakeholders in identifying and managing risks will be discussed in Chapter 10.

Stakeholders may convey their issues regarding the project explicitly or implicitly. Therefore, the team should attempt to analyze and list what kind of issues and concerns are available and may emerge during the implementation of the project. Based on all the inputs discussed, the team should carry out brainstorming sessions and come up with strategies for the stakeholders whose lack of support significantly might impact the project’s success, how to gain their support, and how to engage them effectively in the project. Table 5.1 includes issues and concerns with four stakeholders in the rental booking system project, and engagement strategy and tactics.

Furthermore, we should consider the relationship among stakeholders. Can we improve the project’s chances by working with those who support us to improve the views of those who oppose? Therefore, as indicated in Table 5.1, it would be helpful for the team to have information regarding the relationships among the stakeholders. For example, related stakeholders have been indicated as the project team, sales department, call center, and branches for organizational customers.

A stakeholder register is a living document that should be reassessed regularly as is done for other plans and documents such as risk register and issue log (see Chapter 10). Thus, the project team should assign some time in their weekly or monthly meetings to discuss whether revisions are required to do in the stakeholder register. Stakeholders’ power and interest levels, support levels, risk ratings, issues and concerns, and accordingly engagement strategies and tactics could change throughout the project. Besides, new stakeholders may be added later. This process is discussed in 5.3 “Managing and Monitoring Stakeholders”.

5.2.2.1    Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix

Another data representation tool that can be used is a Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix. It can also be incorporated into the stakeholder register. In Table 5.1 above, the level of support was indicated in five levels: (1) Supports actively, (2) supports, (3) neutral, (4) opposes, and (5) opposes actively [5] . Besides this, another matrix can be used as detailed in the PMBOK Guide 6th Edition. C indicates the current engagement level whereas D indicates desired level.

*C: Current, D: Desired

As indicated in Table 5.2, stakeholders are evaluated based on five levels of engagement. They may be unaware of the project and its potential impacts. They may be aware of the project and potential impacts but resistant to any changes that may occur as a result of the work or outcomes of the project. These stakeholders will be unsupportive of the work or outcomes of the project. When stakeholders are aware of the project but neither supportive nor unsupportive, we can classify them as neutral. When they are aware of the project and potential impacts and supportive of the work and its outcomes, we can classify them as supportive. Eventually, stakeholders are classified as leading when they are aware of the project and potential impacts and actively engaged in ensuring that the project is a success.

5.2.2.2    Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI Chart)

Another data representation technique that can be used to illustrate each team member’s and relevant stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities in each project activity can be a responsibility assignment matrix. It shows the project resources assigned to each work package (lowest level activities in a WBS). One of the common responsibility assignment matrices is RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, and inform) chart. A RACI chart is a useful tool to ensure clear assignment of roles and responsibilities when the team consists of internal and external resources [6] . As seen in Table 5.3, a RACI chart displays the activities associated with team members and stakeholders.

In order to avoid confusion about who is ultimately in charge of supervision and/or decision-making for an activity, there should be only one person associated with accountability [7] . A role that is “Accountable” has the final authority or accountability for the task’s completion. This role is generally assumed by the project sponsor, project manager, or a supervisor or team members delegated by the project manager for an activity. As seen in Table 5.3, for each activity, we have only one role that assumes an accountability role. For example, in the “Collect Requirements” activity, Jim is the team member who is responsible for coordinating the whole activity and/or performing the tasks directly. Jim can consult Jane and Anna who may be subject matter experts who have a substantial amount of experience and knowledge or those who are affected significantly by the activity and have an interest in this activity and the overall project. Thus, Jim can interview Jane and Anna, and learn about their needs, expectations, and concerns. Mary can be the project manager or the supervisor in the team that audits and approves the activity and its deliverables. Tom could be a stakeholder with high interest and low power. We should keep him informed about what is going on in this activity. We can also receive feedback from Tom to improve the tasks in this activity.

• Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK guide) (6th ed.). Project Management Institute. ↵
• https://www.projectmanagement.com/wikis/368897/stakeholder-analysis--using-the-power-interest-grid ↵
• International Institute of Business Analysis. (2015). A guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide), version 3.0. Toronto, Ont: International Institute of Business Analysis. ↵
• Anupam (n.d.). Stakeholder Analysis Register. Retrieved from https://www.projectmanagement.com / ↵

Project Management by Abdullah Oguz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

How to perform a stakeholder analysis

Reading time: about 7 min

You’ve crunched the numbers. You’ve built out your case for a new project or technology investment. You’ve got all the resources to make it happen.

But you’re still missing a step—and arguably the most important one: stakeholder approval and buy-in.

Stakeholders are built into every organization to help ensure that messaging is accurate, work stays on track, or new initiatives are aligned toward shared business goals. While their intentions are good, stakeholders can often be viewed as a roadblock to progress.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the stakeholder analysis process and make sure your goals will actually garner support. Here, we’ll dive into how to perform a stakeholder analysis to identify and get buy-in from key stakeholders at your organization.

Who is a stakeholder—and why do they matter?

Projects are a collaborative effort that impact and intersect with multiple people, teams, organizations, and clients. Anyone who is affected by the outcome of your project, or is actively involved in the project, is referred to as a stakeholder.

This includes any people or groups that influence and are impacted by your project’s outcome, such as

• Project manager
• Team members
• Senior management

Stakeholders can include a wide range of people with varied—and often conflicting—interests that you will need to manage. Keeping stakeholders happy, informed, and on-board is essential to moving your project forward. That’s why understanding who your stakeholders are and what their level of investment and influence is on the project is critical to your success.

What is a stakeholder analysis?

Stakeholder buy-in and approval is just as much about communication, education, and visibility as it is about strategic alignment. Stakeholders must be able to quickly and easily understand where a new project or investment fits into the larger business picture.

A stakeholder analysis template, also known as a power interest grid, can help you in four key ways:

• Gathering crucial input: You don’t know what you don’t know. Often, key stakeholders deliver valuable insight that can help keep your project on track and successful.
• Gaining more resources: If your stakeholder has a full understanding of what it will take to get your project off the ground, they may be able to help you secure the people, tools, and resources you need to make you successful.
• Building trust: By consistently engaging and involving stakeholders in your process, you’re building trust that may make them quick to support upcoming projects.
• Planning ahead: Consistent feedback from key stakeholders helps you anticipate feedback and requirements on future projects to gain buy-in more quickly.  

Performing a stakeholder analysis involves these three steps.

Step 1: Identify your stakeholders

Brainstorm who your stakeholders are. List all of the people who are affected by your work or who have a vested interest in its success or failure. Some of these relationships may include investors, advisors, teammates, or even family.

There are two main groups of stakeholders: internal stakeholders and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders are individuals or groups within your business, such as team members or leadership.

External stakeholders are individuals or groups outside the business, including end users, customers, and investors.

You will need to identify and assess both types of stakeholders in your analysis.

Step 2: Prioritize your stakeholders

Next, prioritize your stakeholders by assessing their level of influence and level of interest. The stakeholder grid is the leading tool in visually assessing key stakeholders.

The position that you allocate to a stakeholder on the grid shows you the actions to take with them:

• High power, highly interested people: Fully engage these people, and make the greatest efforts to satisfy them.
• High power, less interested people: Keep these stakeholders satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message.
• Low power, highly interested people: Adequately inform these people, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues arise. People in this category can often be very helpful with the details of your project in a supportive role.
• Low power, less interested people: Again, monitor these people, but don’t bore them with excessive communication.

Step 3: Understand your key stakeholders

Now that stakeholders have been identified and prioritized, you need to understand how they feel about your project. Some good questions to ask include:

• Do they have a financial or emotional interest in the outcome of your work? Is it positive or negative?
• What motivates them the most?
• Which of your project information is relevant to them, and what is the best way to relay that information?
• What is their current opinion of your work? Is that opinion based on accurate information?
• Who influences their opinion, and are those influencers also your stakeholders?
• If they’re not likely to be supportive of your project, what can you do to win their support?
• If you can’t win their support, what can you do to manage their opposition?

Once you've prioritized your stakeholders and consider their attitude toward your project, you should also consider creating a project management communication plan . A communication matrix will let everyone involved know how often they need to loop stakeholders in.

The most common stakeholders

Below is a list of common stakeholders and some examples of associated communication strategies.

Your direct manager/supervisor

High power, high interest

Your boss’s reputation is tied to the productivity of the people they lead. Your boss also likely has the power to advance or shut down your project(s). This means that you should manage this relationship closely, communicating frequently and requesting and implementing feedback.

Shareholders/investors

High power, medium interest

Shareholders and investors usually hold stake in multiple entities, diluting their unique interest in your project/undertaking. As such, to leverage their investment in your work, you should communicate frequently with them, consult and involve them, with a goal of increasing their interest over time. This is obviously dependent on the type of investment role that exists, and whether your project is the sole investment or part of a portfolio of investments.

High power, probably low interest

The government controls the laws and regulations that could shut down your business or project. Health code inspectors and IRS auditors are examples of government officials that classify as stakeholders. Because government entities monitor everything/everyone, their interest in your individual business/endeavor is likely low. As such, your goal should be to keep them satisfied, communicating regularly, consulting and involving them in order to prevent them from posing a risk to your project.

Senior executives

High power, low interest

Your company’s senior executives make the biggest decision, giving them high influence but limited bandwidth to focus on your project specifically. This means your strategy should be to keep them satisfied. Communicate when necessary, consulting and seeking feedback, to increase their interest in you and your work.

Your co-workers

Medium power, medium interest

Co-workers carry a range of influence, but mostly their influence will be in their ability to leverage additional resources for your project, including the support of other co-workers and your superiors. That means you want to keep them satisfied and informed. Update them on your project, and be willing to leverage their interest into a supporter role.

The tools you need to keep stakeholders informed

No matter the level of technical knowledge around your project, visuals like a stakeholder diagram are a great way to communicate your project to your key stakeholders and obtain buy-in. Further, it’s useful to know not only what to communicate, but how often to communicate.

Lucidchart offers numerous templates to help you keep stakeholders updated on new and in-progress projects.

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Related articles

Before you start any project, learn how to identify and gain the support of the right people through a stakeholder map and analysis.

Learn how to create a communication plan for project management and how this documentation can benefit your team and stakeholders. This article includes best practices and communication plan templates!

Bring your bright ideas to life.

or continue with

Stakeholder Analysis in Project Management: Definition & Example

Fahad Usmani, PMP

September 20, 2022

Project management is about managing stakeholder requirements, and stakeholder analysis is a key to this process.

You must identify your project stakeholders and analyze them to develop your strategy to engage them so you can complete the project with the least hassle.

Today’s blog post will discuss in detail about analyzing project stakeholders.

Stakeholder Analysis

Definition: A stakeholder analysis collects stakeholders’ information and groups them based on their attributes, such as power, interest, influence, and level of participation in the project, to help develop a stakeholder engagement plan.

You cannot offer the same attention to all stakeholders. The stakeholders’ requirement depends on the stakeholder and their interest in the project. The stakeholder analysis process helps you group the stakeholders based on their requirements so you can fulfill them throughout the project life cycle and earn their support.

Why is Stakeholder Analysis Required?

Stakeholder analysis is required for the following reasons:

To Collect Project Requirements

The existence of the project is to satisfy stakeholder requirements. This process helps you analyze stakeholders and thus collect the stakeholders’ requirements. This helps develop the scope of work and other project management plans.

To Develop Stakeholder Engagement

After analyzing stakeholders, the next step is developing a stakeholder engagement plan. This plan helps you manage your stakeholders and get their buy-in. Stakeholder support is required to complete the project successfully.

Helps Builds Relation

Classifying your stakeholders early and managing them helps build a good relationship. This relationship helps provide support when needed.

The Importance of Stakeholders Analysis

• Separating Unimportant Stakeholders: A large project can have hundreds or thousands of stakeholders; managing them is no easy task. A stakeholder analysis lets you know who key stakeholders are; Investing resources on low power and low-interest stakeholder is a waste.
• Group the Stakeholder: Stakeholder analysis helps group stakeholders based on different attributes. The attributes can be high-power, low-power, high-interest, low-interest, etc.

How to Conduct Stakeholders Analysis

A stakeholders analysis requires the following steps:

• Identify Stakeholders.
• Categorize stakeholders.
• Priorities Stakeholders.

#1. Identify Stakeholders

You must identify your stakeholders for analysis. The following are key techniques to identify project stakeholders:

• Business Case: This document contains the justification for the project.
• Benefits Management Plan: Every project has benefits to deliver. This document shows the project deliverable can satisfy the beneficiary after the project closes.
• Agreement: This is a contract between the performing organization and third parties such as suppliers, contractors, or partners.
• Expert Judgment: Subject matter experts provide expert judgment.
• Brainstorming: This activity helps generate ideas. All team members are invited to do this and identify stakeholders.
• Brainwriting: This is similar to brainstorming, but team members are told before the meeting to come up with ideas to be reviewed during the meeting.
• Survey: Here, you retrieve data or information from non-project team members, especially the larger population. This is common in community projects.

The output to identify the stakeholder process is called the stakeholder register .

Every project has visible and sleeping stakeholders.

Visible stakeholders, such as customers and suppliers, are those whose influence is easily noticed. 

Sleeping stakeholders are quiet and pose the greatest risk because they are often not proactively managed. Examples are the procurement departments and regulators.

Some stakeholders can be risky as they can negatively influence the project outcome. These stakeholders are not always a threat. Sometimes, they provide an opportunity for project success.

#2. Categorize Stakeholders

The following two methods are the most popular models to categorize stakeholders:

• Power/Interest Grid

Salience Model

We will discuss these two models in the stakeholder analysis model section.

#3. Prioritize Stakeholders

After grouping the stakeholders, you will prioritize stakeholders based on their requirements and the influence they hold on to the project or its objective.

High power and influential stakeholders will be at the top, while low power, low influence, and low-interest stakeholders will be at the bottom. They are placed on a watch list for future monitoring.

Example of a Stakeholder Analysis

The following image shows an example of stakeholder analysis:

Stakeholder Analysis Models

Various models are available to analyze project stakeholders. The following two are the most popular models for analyzing stakeholders.

A salience model is a Venn diagram consisting of circles representing three attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. The intersection shows stakeholders with multiple attributes.

The stakeholders are classified into seven groups according to these attributes:

• Discretionary
• Demanding 

You can divide these groups into three categories: 

• Latent stakeholders
• Expectant stakeholders
• Definitive stakeholders

#1. Latent Stakeholders

These stakeholders have only one attribute. Since they only have power, these stakeholders get little attention.

Dormant, demanding, and discretionary are examples of latent stakeholders. 

Dormant Stakeholders: Dormant stakeholders have high power, low urgency, and low legitimacy. Due to their high power, they can influence your project. Therefore, you will manage these stakeholders closely.

For example, top management does not take part in meetings and has no interest. However, you will still watch them as they can influence your project.

Discretionary Stakeholders: This group has high legitimacy, low urgency, and low power. Despite having lower power and urgency, you will manage them closely because of their legitimacy.

Examples of these stakeholders are NGOs and charitable organizations.

Demanding Stakeholders: These individuals have high urgency, low power, and low legitimacy. They are usually vocal, so you will need to manage them carefully.

For example, if your project is in a public place, the local community has an interest. 

#2. Expectant Stakeholders

This group has two attributes: they have high expectations and are actively involved with the project. 

Dominant, dangerous, and dependent are examples of expectant stakeholders.

Dominant Stakeholders: These have high legitimacy and high power but low urgency.  You will manage them closely. 

For example, local government agencies.

Dangerous Stakeholders: This group has high power, high urgency, and low legitimacy. Sometimes, they can be violent, so you will manage them cautiously. 

For example, a group of local terrorists in a third-world country.

Dependent Stakeholders: These people have high urgency, high legitimacy, and low power. Due to their lack of power, you will not manage them closely. 

For example, in construction work, residents can be an example of dependent stakeholders.

#3. Definitive Stakeholders

This last set has three attributes and requires the most attention from the project manager. 

Core Stakeholders: Sometimes, these stakeholders are known as “definitive.” 

They have high power, high urgency, and high legitimacy. You will manage them closely. 

For example, the top management of your organization. 

Non-Stakeholders: You will not manage these people.

Power Interest Grid

This is the most popular method of grouping stakeholders.

Here, you categorize stakeholders based on their power and interest in the project or its objective. 

You can divide stakeholders into four groups

• High-power – high-interest
• High-power – low-interest
• Low-power – high-interest
• Low-power – low-interest

When Should You Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis?

Stakeholder analysis is an ongoing process. However, for the first time, you will conduct it as soon as you complete the stakeholder identification process. Afterward, you will conduct this process whenever you identify a new stakeholder or see the position of a stakeholder change. For example, a highly powerful stakeholder is no longer powerful.

After completing the stakeholder analysis, update the risk register.

The stakeholder analysis begins with the identification. Stakeholders’ analysis helps you identify key individuals and groups so you can manage them and get their buy-in.

Your project cannot succeed until your stakeholders are happy, and stakeholder analysis can help you achieve that objective.

I am Mohammad Fahad Usmani, B.E. PMP, PMI-RMP. I have been blogging on project management topics since 2011. To date, thousands of professionals have passed the PMP exam using my resources.

PMP Question Bank

This is the most popular Question Bank for the PMP Exam. To date, it has helped over 10,000 PMP aspirants prepare for the exam. 

PMP Training Program

This is a PMI-approved 35 contact hours training program and it is based on the latest exam content outline applicable in 2024.

Similar Posts

What is Engagement Management?

Engagement management is the key to project success—especially if the project involves many stakeholders and the requirements are not initially well defined. Engagement management is a part of stakeholder management, but for complex projects with many stakeholders, engagement management must be handled meticulously throughout the project lifecycle. This process is also sometimes known as workforce…

Stakeholder Engagement: How to Manage Project Stakeholders?

Today, we will discuss stakeholder engagement in project management. Stakeholder engagement is key to the project’s success as the project is about managing stakeholder requirements, and therefore, they must be engaged and kept satisfied throughout the project life cycle. Stakeholder Engagement Stakeholder engagement is a process of managing stakeholders to win their support for the…

What is Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix in Project Management?

Project managers must ensure that they engage the stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. Involving stakeholders in the project is a daunting task, and in this case, a Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix is a great help. The stakeholder engagement assessment matrix is an important project document, and today’s post will discuss this document in detail….

How to Create a Stakeholder Map (Templates & Examples Included)

All projects and business ventures are initiated to satisfy stakeholders. As a project manager, you will need stakeholder analysis to identify key stakeholders that you must satisfy to complete your project successfully. A stakeholder map shows the power, interest, or influence of stakeholders on the project. This information lets you analyze stakeholders and plan your…

One Comment

Thank you for your continued sharing of vital information for any person pursuing a career in project management. Your blog email is something I look forward to. And yiur expertise gives a great insight into the life and knowledge of a project manager.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

A Case Study on the Implementation of Stakeholder Management in Organizational Practice

• First Online: 19 September 2017

Cite this chapter

• Sybille Sachs 6 , 7 ,
• Christian Stutz 8 , 9 ,
• Vanessa Mcsorley 10 &
• Thomas Schneider 11  

Part of the book series: Issues in Business Ethics ((IBET,volume 46))

1691 Accesses

Recent research makes a strong argument for studying how organizations can implement a strategic stakeholder management approach. In this paper, we analyze an empirical case study in order to gain refined knowledge and develop ‘best’ implementation tactics, building on Plaza-Úbeda et al., (A case study of stakeholder identification and prioritization by managers, Journal of Business Ethics, 75: 1–23, 2010) conceptualization of the implementation of stakeholder integration (SI). The case study draws on a project concerning our own university, a private higher-education provider, which faces a new regulatory environment. In response to new legal measures, which include accounting for stakeholders, the project aims at evaluating and improving the university’s approach to managing its stakeholders. Based on the case observations, we suggest that any practical implementation should start with building on pre-existing organizational routines. Following the emphasis we put on planting the ‘seed’ of stakeholder thinking into strategic management processes and systems, we postulate to conceptualize practical implementation as interventions, thereby avoiding to ‘add-on’ new processes and structures. Interventions might help to rethink, or even break up, current routines in order to improve the stakeholder management capabilities of an organization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Alvesson, Mats, and Dan Kärreman. 2007. Constructing mystery: Empirical matters in theory development. Academy of Management Review 32: 1265–1281.

Article   Google Scholar  

Barney, Jay. 1991. Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management 17: 99–120.

Bresman, Henrik. 2013. Changing routines: A process model of vicarious group learning in pharmaceutical R&D. Academy of Management Journal 56: 35–61.

Brinkerhoff, Derick W., and Benjamin Crosby. 2002. Managing policy reform: Concepts and tools for decision-makers in developing and transitioning countries . Bloomfield: Kumarian Press.

Google Scholar  

Bundy, Jonathan, Christine Shropshire, and Ann K. Buchholtz. 2013. Strategic cognition and issue salience: Toward an explanation of firm responsiveness to stakeholder concerns. Academy of Management Review 38: 352–376.

Calton, Jerry M., and Steven L. Payne. 2003. Coping with paradox: Multistakeholder learning dialogue as a pluralist sensemaking process for addressing messy problems. Business & Society 42: 7–42.

Cohen, Michael D., Roger Burkhart, Giovanni Dosi, Massimo Egidi, Luigi Marengo, Massimo Warglien, and Sidney Winter. 1996. Routines and other recurring action patterns of organizations: Contemporary research issues. Industrial and Corporate Change 5: 653–698.

DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160.

Donaldson, Thomas, and Lee E. Preston. 1995. The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of Management Review 20: 65–91.

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. 1989. Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review 14: 532–550.

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M., and Melissa E. Graebner. 2007. Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. Academy of Management Journal 50: 25–32.

Freeman, R. Edward. 1984. Strategic management: A stakeholder approach . Marshfield: Pitman Publishing.

Freeman, R. Edward, Jeffrey S. Harrison, Andrew C. Wicks, Bidhan L. Parmar, and Simone de Colle. 2010. Stakeholder theory: The state of the art . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Gersick, Connie J.G. 1991. Revolutionary change theories: A multilevel exploration of the punctuated equilibrium paradigm. Academy of Management Review 16: 10–36.

Gioia, Dennis A., Kevin G. Corley, and Aimee L. Hamilton. 2013. Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational Research Methods 16: 15–31.

Greenwood, Michelle. 2007. Stakeholder engagement: Beyond the myth of corporate responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics 74: 315–327.

Hannan, Michael T., and John Freeman. 1977. The population ecology of organizations. American Journal of Sociology 82: 929–964.

Harrison, Jeffrey, R. Edward Freeman, and Mônica Cavalcanti Sá de Abreu. 2015. Stakeholder theory as an ethical approach to effective management: Applying the theory to multiple contexts. Review of Business Management 17: 858–869.

Harrison, Jeffrey S., and Andrew C. Wicks. 2013. Stakeholder theory, value, and firm performance. Business Ethics Quarterly 23: 97–124.

Heugens, Pursey P.M.A.R., Frans A.J. van den Bosch, and Cees B.M. van Riel. 2002. Stakeholder integration: Building mutually enforcing relationships. Business & Society 41: 36–60.

Kaler, John. 2006. Evaluating stakeholder theory. Journal of Business Ethics 69: 249–268.

Ketokivi, Mikko. 2006. Elaborating the contingency theory of organizations: The case of manufacturing flexibility strategies. Production and Operations Management 15: 215–228.

Ketokivi, Mikko, and Thomas Choi. 2014. Renaissance of case research as a scientific method. Journal of Operations Management 32: 232–240.

Krick, Thomas, Maya Forstater, Philip Monaghan, and Maria Sillanpää. 2005. The stakeholder engagement manual volume 2: The practitioners handbook on stakeholder engagement. Account Ability, the United Nations Environment Programme, and Stakeholder Research Associates. Cobourg.

Lamberg, Juha-Antti, Grant T. Savage, and Kalle Pajunen. 2003. Strategic stakeholder perspective to ESOP negotiations: The case of United Airlines. Managment Decision 41: 383–393.

Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry . London: SAGE Publications.

Mahoney, Joseph T. 2012. Towards a stakeholder theory of strategic management. In Towards a New Theory of the Firm , ed. Joan E. Ricart Costa and Joseph M. Rosanas Martí, 153–147. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA.

Mantere, Saku, and Mikko Ketokivi. 2013. Reasoning in organization science. Academy of Management Review 38: 70–89.

Mitchell, Ronald K., Bradley R. Agle, and Donna J. Wood. 1997. Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review 22: 853–886.

Näsi, Juha. 1995. What is stakeholder thinking? A snapshot of a social theory of the firm. In Understanding stakeholder thinking , ed. Juha Näsi. Helsinki, Fin: LSR-Publ.

Nelson, Richard, and Sidney Winter. 1982. An evolutionary theory of organizational change . Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University.

Neville, Benjamin A., Simon J. Bell, and Gregory J. Whitwell. 2011. Stakeholder salience revisited: Refining, redefining, and refueling an underdeveloped conceptual tool. Journal of Business Ethics 102: 357–378.

Nielsen, Richard P. 2016. Action research as an ethics praxis method. Journal of Business Ethics 135 (3): 419–428.

Parent, Milena M., and David L. Deephouse. 2007. A case study of stakeholder identification and prioritization by managers. Journal of Business Ethics 75: 1–23.

Plaza-Úbeda, José A., Jerónimo de Burgos-Jiménez, and Eva Carmona-Moreno. 2010. Measuring stakeholder integration: Knowledge, interaction and adaptational behavior dimensions. Journal of Business Ethics 93: 419–442.

Post, James E., Lee E. Preston, and Sybille Sachs. 2002. Redefining the corporation: Stakeholder management and organizational wealth . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Priem, Richard L., John E. Butler, and Sali Li. 2013. Toward reimagining strategy research: retrospection and prospection on the 2011 AMR decade award article. Academy of Management Review 38: 471–489.

Sachs, Sybille, and Edwin Rühli. 2011. Stakeholder matters: A new paradigm for strategy in society . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sandberg, Jörgen, and Haridimos Tsoukas. 2011. Grasping the logic of practice: Theorizing through practical rationality. Academy of Management Review 36: 338–360.

Savage, Grant T., Timothy W. Nix, Carlson J. Whitehead, and John D. Blair. 1991. Strategies for assessing and managing organizational stakeholders. Academy of Management Executive 5: 61–75.

Stutz, Christian. 2017. The strategic cognition view of issue salience and the evolution of a political issue: Landis & Gyr, the Hungarian Uprising and East-West trade, 1953–1967. In Stakeholder engagement: Clinical research cases , ed. R. Edward Freeman, Johanna Kujala, and Sybille Sachs. Dordrecht: Springer.

Van De Ven, Andrew H. 2007. Engaged scholarship: A guide for organizational and social research . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vidal, Natalia, Robert A. Kozak, and Eric Hansen. 2015. Adoption and implementation of corporate responsibility practices: A proposed framework. Business & Society 54: 701–717.

Zott, Christoph, Raphael Amit, and Lorenzo Massa. 2011. The business model: Recent developments and future research. Journal of Managementanagement 37: 1019–1042.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration, Lagerstrasse 5, 8021, Zurich, Switzerland

Sybille Sachs

Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich, Lagerstrasse 5, 8021, Zurich, Switzerland

Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

Christian Stutz

Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich, Lagerstrasse 5, 8021, Zurich, Switzerland

Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration, Zurich, Switzerland

Vanessa Mcsorley

Institute for Strategic Management, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration, Zurich, Switzerland

Thomas Schneider

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sybille Sachs .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

R. Edward Freeman

Faculty of Management, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

Johanna Kujala

Institute for Strategic Management: Stakeholder View, HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Sachs, S., Stutz, C., Mcsorley, V., Schneider, T. (2017). A Case Study on the Implementation of Stakeholder Management in Organizational Practice. In: Freeman, R., Kujala, J., Sachs, S. (eds) Stakeholder Engagement: Clinical Research Cases. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62785-4_16

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62785-4_16

Published : 19 September 2017

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-62784-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-62785-4

eBook Packages : Religion and Philosophy Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• The Open University
• Guest user / Sign out
• Study with The Open University

My OpenLearn Profile

Personalise your OpenLearn profile, save your favourite content and get recognition for your learning

About this free course

Become an ou student, download this course, share this free course.

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

2.6.1 Case study: Stakeholder analysis

Let’s see how Gwyneth approached her stakeholder analysis:

Case study: Gwyneth

I used the basic diagram and tweaked it to fit my situation. I changed ‘shareholders’, which I won’t have initially as I plan to start up as a sole trader, to ‘family’, as they will have a big influence on the business and also their needs are my priority.

Centre box: Grub from Gwyneth. Surrounding boxes: Box: Local suppliers of bread, flour, meet and dairy products; Box: Local people to make sandwiches and cakes; Box: local workers and manager for meeting; Box: that's me!; Box: Family – partner and children, parents etc.; Box: Bank and my parents have lent me money to start up.; Box: Local cafes and other food companies, e.g. XYZ catering; Box: Environmental and food hygiene regulation plus taxes etc.

I could have included many more boxes, but I decided to concentrate on the stakeholders I felt were most important to me as I start up. I am sure the influence of each stakeholder will be different in 12 months’ time.

I found it quite daunting at first to think that all these people had an interest in and an influence on my new company. I started to work out what each stakeholder wanted from me and this meant that it became clearer what the impact of each stakeholder might be.

I decided to include myself as a stakeholder so that I could look at my needs alongside everyone else’s, to see if they were compatible.

I marked how strong the demands of each stakeholder are on me, which helped me see which to prioritise.

I wasn’t sure about the power of my parents as they are very reasonable, but should they stop helping with the kids they would be very powerful indeed! I will need to think about how my business and family life can adapt to each other over time, should my business become successful. I can’t always guarantee my parents will have the good health or time to help with childcare – while it is a little stronger than ‘goodwill,’ I don’t think relying on goodwill is a way to operate a professional business!

That made me realise that demands change and the power of each stakeholder can change over time. I guess I need to keep an eye on that as my business develops…

Your business plan must recognise the needs of each of these stakeholders. You can see that often their needs are conflicting, for example, the needs of workers to have a good rate of pay and the needs of local firms to have sandwiches at as low a price as possible. Running a business is about balancing these conflicting interests to achieve a compromise that is acceptable to as many stakeholders as possible.

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

Appendix B Case Study: Example Stakeholder Analysis

From the book multicriteria decision making.

• Timothy Havranek , Doug MacNair and James Wolf
• X / Twitter

Supplementary Materials

Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

Chapters in this book (18)

• Past Committee
• ASA conferences
• Keynotes & Plenaries
• Laboratories
• ASA17 (External)
• Plenaries & Events
• Firth Lecture
• ASA Publications
• ASA Networks

The Network

• Careers & Opportunities

Topical Debates

• Ethics Home
• Introduction
• Ethical Dillemmas
• Analysis Home
• Organisational
• Stakeholder
• Worked Example
• Case Studies
• Book Series Home
• Series Details
• Applications of anthropology book
• Events Home
• Anthropology of Britain
• Anthropology of Time
• Postgraduate Network
• Early Career Network
• UK Network for the Anthropology of Christianity (UKNAC)
• Climate Network
• EthNav Home
• Ethical navigation
• EthNav background
• Ethnography and research ethics
• Ethical Challenges and Conundrums
• Professional Ethics Codes
• Ethics on the Web
• Ethics and institutional review
• Ethics and research councils
• Universities and Ethics Review
• Ethics as Virtue

Careers & Opportunities

Book Series

Ethical dilemmas in professional practice in anthropology

Policy - environment - development, stakeholder analysis and stakeholder participation.

This page provides a briefing on what to consider when undertaking a stakeholder analysis and how to engage stakeholder participation. The briefing was prepared by Dr Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes. Below is an activity about stakeholder analysis. You will need to read through the briefing paper and then through all the documents in one of the worked examples. Alternatively you could do a stakeholder analysis of your own research context.

This task will take three to four hours to complete fully. First read through the briefing paper below and then choose one of the worked examples (or your own research). You might find it helpful to print out this activity so it is to hand as you work through other documents.

• Define the stakeholders and then order them into primary, secondary and key stakeholders.
• Using point 6 in the briefing paper draw up a stakeholder table. This could be in the form of Venn diagrams, or as a graph with different axis identifying, for instance, importance and power. On the table identify the stakeholders interests, both overt and hidden, and briefly assess their likely impact on the project.
• Identify the risks and assumptions which will affect project design and what counts as success

Think in terms of presenting your findings to your supervisor or a group of fellow researchers. If you are able, present your findings to someone! Alternatively you could submit your summary by emailing admin(at)theasa.org and see it added to a collection of student analyses.

What is a stakeholder analysis?

Stakeholder analysis is the identification of a project's key stakeholders, an assessment of their interests, and the ways in which these interests affect project risk and viability. It is linked to both institutional appraisal and social analysis: drawing on the information deriving from these approaches, but also contributing to the combining of such data in a single framework.

Definitions

Stakeholders are groups of people who share a common interest, for example, the 'consultancy company', the 'project management', 'the villagers', 'the local authorities' etc. But, within any of these, there are sub-categories of stakeholders with differing interests which they may or may not be prepared to subsume in the general collective interest. Analysis might conclude that the concept of 'villager', as a collective stakeholder, is quite meaningless because the various groups of people living in a village have so little in common; some villagers might consider that they have more shared interest with the representatives of the local authorities than with their next door neighbours. Similar issues arise in formal institutions, such as government ministries. Competition between departments or individuals may be stronger than commitments to the institutions as a whole. There may also be crosscutting interests, such as on an ethnic basis, both within the institution and affecting outside relationships.

Stakeholders can be divided into two very broad groups:

• Primary stakeholders are those ultimately affected, either positively (beneficiaries) or negatively (for example, those involuntarily resettled). In most projects, primary stakeholders will be categorised according to social analysis. Thus, primary stakeholders should often be divided by gender, social or income classes, occupation or service user groups. In many projects, categories of primary stakeholders may overlap (e.g. women and low-income groups; or minor forest users and ethnic minorities).
• Secondary stakeholders are the intermediaries in the aid delivery process. They can be divided into funding, implementing, monitoring and advocacy organisations, or simply governmental, NGO and private sector organisations. In many projects it will also be necessary to consider key individuals as specific stakeholders (e.g. heads of departments or other agencies, who have personal interests at stake as well as formal institutional objectives). Also note that there may be some informal groups of people who will act as intermediaries. For example, politicians, local leaders, respected persons with social or religious influence. Within some organisations there may be sub-groups which should be considered as stakeholders. For example, public service unions, women employees, specific categories of staff. This definition of stakeholders includes both winners and losers, and those involved or excluded from decision-making processes.
• Key stakeholders are those who can significantly influence, or are important to the success of the project. Influence refers to how powerful a stakeholder is; 'importance' refers to those stakeholders whose problems, needs and interests are the priority of the funder's aid - if those important stakeholders are not assisted effectively then the project cannot be deemed a 'success'.

Why stakeholder participation is important

• The purpose of aid both overseas and in the UK is to enhance the economic and social development and well-being of recipients according to the Department of International Development. This means fully taking into account recipients' views on objectives and how they are to be achieved. It is a question both of principle and practice. The principle is that people should be fully involved in issues concerning themselves and the society in which they live. And effectiveness and sustainability depend practically, in part, on the commitment of interested parties (stakeholders). thus participation is a central element in achieving aid objectives.
• Participation contributes to the chances of aid being more effective because, in drawing on a wide range of interested parties, the prospects for appropriate project design and commitment to achieving objectives is likely to be maximised. People are lore likely to be skilled and confident, committed to carrying on the activity after aid stops thus strengthening ownership and sustainability.
• The Department of International Development has found that the most successful projects proved to be those where the project objectives corresponded to the priorities of partner institutions and beneficiaries, and where the local institutions and beneficiaries were regularly involved in decision-making at all stages of the project cycle.
• Participation should reduce the risk of failure. But it is not a guarantee of project success. Achieving participation is not easy. In any aid activity there may be conflicting interests among recipients as well as among others involved in the project or programme. It may result in conflict; it can have significant costs in time and it means that institutions, such as funding agencies, will have to change the way they go bout their business.

Why do a stakeholder analysis?

• to identify and define the characteristics of key stakeholders
• to assess the manner in which they might affect or be affected by the programme/project outcome
• to understand the relations between stakeholders, including an assessment of the real or potential conflicts of interests and expectations between stakeholders
• to assess the capacity of different stakeholders to participate

When should it be done?

Stakeholder analysis should always be done at the beginning of a project, even if it is a quick list of stakeholders and their interests. Such a list can be used to draw out the main assumptions which are needed if a project is going to be viable, and to identify some of the key risks.

The outside intervention by an aid agency, bringing additional resources into an area, may in itself create new stakeholder groups which previously did not exist. Stakeholder analysis must be repeated at intervals during the project cycle to ensure that the involvement of such groups is adequately addressed and also to check whether the situations of original stakeholders have changed. Stakeholder analysis often involves sensitive and undiplomatic information. Many interests are covert, and agendas are partially hidden. In many situations there will be few benefits in trying to uncover such agendas in public.

How to do a stakeholder analysis

There are several steps to doing a stakeholder analysis:

• draw up a 'stakeholder table'
• do an assessment of each stakeholder's importance to project success and their relative power/influence
• identify risks and assumptions which will affect project design and success.

Stakeholder tables

To draw up a stakeholder table:

• identify and list all potential stakeholders
• identify their interests (overt and hidden) in relation to the problems being addressed by a project and its objectives. Note that each stakeholder may have several interests
• briefly assess the likely impact of the project on each of these interests (positive, negative, or unknown)
• indicate the relative priority which the project should give to each stakeholder in meeting their interests

Checklist for identifying stakeholders

• have all primary and secondary stakeholders been listed?
• have all potential supporters and opponents of the project been identified?
• has gender analysis been used to identify different types of female stakeholders (at both primary and secondary levels)?
• have primary stakeholders been divided into use/occupational groups, or income groups?
• have the interests of vulnerable groups (especially the poor) been identified?
• are there any new primary or secondary stakeholders that are likely to emerge as a result of the project?

Checklist for drawing out stakeholders' interests in relation to the project

Interests of all types of stakeholders may be difficult to define, especially if they are 'hidden', or in contradiction with the openly stated aims of the organisations or groups involved. A rule of thumb is to relate each stakeholder to either the problems which the project is seeking to address (if at an early stage of the project), or the established objectives of the project (if the project is already under way). Interests may be drawn out by asking:

• what are the stakeholder's expectations of the project?
• what benefits are there likely to be for the stakeholder?
• what resources will the stakeholder wish to commit (or avoid committing) to the project?
• what other interests does the stakeholder have which may conflict with the project?
• how does the stakeholder regard others in the list?

Information on secondary stakeholders should be available from institutional appraisals; information on primary stakeholders should be available from social analyses. Especially in the case of primary stakeholders, many of the interests will have to be defined by the persons with the best 'on the ground' experience. Double check the interests being ascribed to primary groups, to confirm that they are plausible.

Assessing the influence and 'importance' of stakeholders

Assessing influence

• Influence is the power which stakeholders have over a project - to control what decisions are made, facilitate its implementation, or exert influence which affects the project negatively. Influence is perhaps best understood as the extent to which people, groups or organisations (i.e. stakeholders) are able to persuade or coerce others into making decisions, and following certain courses of action.
• Power may derive from the nature of a stakeholder's organisation, or their position in relation to other stakeholders (for example, line ministries which control budgets and other departments). Other forms of influence may be more informal (for example, personal connections to ruling politicians). It may also be necessary to consider stakeholders whose power, and therefore influence, will increase because of resources introduced by the project.

Assessing importance to project success

• Importance indicates the priority given by funders to satisfying stakeholders' needs and interests through the project. Importance is likely to be most obvious when stakeholder interests in a project converge closely with the funder's objectives.
• Importance is distinct from influence . There will often be stakeholders, especially unorganised primary stakeholders, upon which the project places great priority (e.g. women, resource poor farmers, slum dwellers, ethnic minorities etc.). These stakeholders may have weak capacity to participate in the project, and limited power to influence key decisions. For instance, for a proposed population project, satisfying the interests of women and lower-middle income couples (unorganised primary stakeholders) is of high importance to the success of the project, even though they are weak in terms of their influence. Conversely, a category like religious leaders, may also appear as a stakeholder group with a high degree of influence on the project, but whose interests are not targeted by the project.

Checklist for assessing which stakeholders are important for project success

When assessing the importance of stakeholders to project success, use these 'checklist' questions, the answers to which may already be suggested by the information existing in stakeholders' tables:

• which problems, affecting which stakeholders, does the project seek to address or alleviate?
• for which stakeholders does the project place a priority on meeting their needs, interests and expectations?
• which stakeholders' interests converge most closely with policy and project objectives?

Identifying appropriate stakeholder participation

• Defining who should participate, in what ways, at what stage of the project cycle. contributes to a well designed project.
• Stakeholder analysis can contribute to the process of deciding who the key stakeholders are to be included in the project. Note that the 'key' refers to high importance, high influence, or both.
• Key stakeholders with high influence and importance to project success are likely to provide the basis of the project 'coalition of support' and are potential partners in planning and implementation.
• Conversely, key stakeholders with high influence, but with low importance to project success may be 'managed' by being consulted or informed.

• Free Samples
• Premium Essays
• Editing Services Editing Proofreading Rewriting
• Extra Tools Essay Topic Generator Thesis Generator Citation Generator GPA Calculator Study Guides Donate Paper
• Essay Writing Help
• About Us About Us Testimonials FAQ
• Studentshare
• Finance & Accounting
• Wal-Mart: Stakeholders Analysis

Wal-Mart: Stakeholders Analysis - Case Study Example

• Subject: Finance & Accounting
• Type: Case Study
• Level: Undergraduate
• Pages: 6 (1500 words)
• Downloads: 0

Extract of sample "Wal-Mart: Stakeholders Analysis"

• Stakeholder
• stakeholders
• Cited: 0 times
• Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied Copy Citation Citation is copied

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Wal-Mart: Stakeholders Analysis

Wal-mart de mexico issues, trust and delegation in wal-mart company, stakeholder management at wal-mart, k-mart - stakeholder analysis, international hrm: wal-mart stores, wal-mart organization supply chain management, corporate governance issue at walmart.

• TERMS & CONDITIONS
• PRIVACY POLICY
• COOKIES POLICY