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Advancing Project Stakeholder Analysis by Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

出版	Project Management Institute, 2014
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=56uuoQEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋In this paper we aim to advance the understanding of project stakeholder analysis by identifying contributions and inspirations from other fields. The stakeholder concept became well-known when Freeman, in his book Strategic management: a stakeholder approach (1984), suggested that the managerial view of the firm focusing on owners, suppliers, employees, and customers should be replaced by a stakeholder view of the firm which included more groups, for example, authorities, unions, consumer advocates, competitors, environmentalists, special interest groups, and media. He claimed that without understanding the needs and concerns of these stakeholder groups, the firm could not formulate corporate objectives that would make the stakeholders support the firm sufficiently for its present and future survival. Even though Freeman can be coined the stakeholder concept giant, Freeman identified many earlier giants himself and traced the origin of the stakeholder term to an internal memorandum at Stanford Research Institute in 1963. In the 1970s, researchers within more fields contributed to the stakeholder management understanding, even though not all of them used the stakeholder term, e.g. Pfeffer and Salancik in their resource dependence perspective. Acknowledged giants within project management as Cleland and King made important inputs in the 1970s by offering a method for analyzing clientele groups and claimants. Drawing on systems theory, Ackoff suggested that stakeholders should be seen in a system. He offered a method for doing stakeholder analysis of organizational systems. Further, he claimed that problem solving of system-wide problems requires participation of stakeholders. He proposed a method for the inclusion of stakeholder groups in analysis and problem solution. Leaving other prominent researchers out and jumping to the present, Freeman is still a major giant in the field. In 2007, he, Harrison and Wicks suggested managing for stakeholders. This approach--in opposition to the instrumental approach managing stakeholders, or management for stakeholders--takes an ethical stand by considering and involving more stakeholders than the ones with the largest potential for helping or harming the organization. Despite all the valuable inputs from giants within various fields, our claim is that the current understanding of project stakeholder analysis is lacking important elements. A core weakness is that it is based on a rational-analytical approach at a highly aggregated level, even though Freeman argued in 1984 that (1) a danger in stakeholder analysis is to see stakeholders as 'unreasonable' or 'irrational' and (2) that it might be wise to break a category of stakeholders, such as government and employees, down in smaller categories for analysis. In this paper, we advance project stakeholder analysis by investigating the usefulness of a method 'systemic constellation' which originated in family therapy, but has been adopted by the general management field. In opposition to classical project stakeholder analysis it enables the inclusion of emotions, attitudes, prejudices, and unconscious assumptions--and thereby provides a richer basis for understanding the stakeholders. The method was applied on a real case and discussed by researchers and practitioners in a focus group setting. Findings suggest that systemic constellation builds on the roots of stakeholder theory and, at the same time, enables stakeholder analysis beyond the analytical-rational level and an aggregated level.