Stakeholder Concepts and Stakeholder Analysis Techniques

Chapter two shows that it has been increasingly recognised that participatory approaches to development are required in order to move down a more sustainable pathway. As the world becomes increasingly globalised and connected, any concern, whether it relates to policy, development generally, tourism development or natural resource management affects numerous groups of people, businesses and organisations. No one organisation or person owns the concern and therefore in attempting to analyse and find solutions to problems, taking these groups ideas into account is crucial in effective problem solving, policy formation and implementation (Bryson, 2003).

3.5.1 Stakeholder Concepts

Stakeholder analysis has numerous strands and can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, including, but not limited to: business/management; development; policy; health; education; tourism and any aspect of study where numerous groups, individuals or organisations (the stakeholders) have an interest and potential to influence something (the stake). In deciding who or what is or is not a stakeholder in any given situation, the definition used is therefore consequential, as it affects ‘who’ and ‘what’ counts (Mitchell, Agle, and Wood, 1997). The ‘who’ aspect is comprehensively covered in the definition given by Grimble and Wellard (1997) as it encompasses levels of society, public, private and not-for-profit sectors and organisations as well as communities. It is therefore what Bryson (2003) would see as ‘inclusive’:

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“We use the term ‘stakeholders’ to mean any group of people, organised or unorganised, who share a common interest or stake in a particular issue or system; they can be at any level or position in society, from global, national and regional concerns down to the level of household or intra household, and be groups of any size or aggregation.”

(Grimble and Wellard, 1997, p175-6)

The definition above does not however adequately cover the ‘what’ aspect. For Starik (1995) stakeholder definitions should include living and non-living entities, or even mental-emotional constructs, such as intergenerationality, valuing both past generations and the wellbeing of future generations. This thesis analyses stakeholder (spoken) discourses and as the environment and future generations cannot speak they are represented through the views of other human stakeholders. Consequently, the definition of Grimble and Wellard above is to be used in this study.

The background to stakeholder analysis has its roots in the management/organisational theory literature, with Clarkson (1995) identifying that the term was used as far back as the 1930s. It was however the 1980s and 1990s that saw a proliferation of literature on stakeholder analysis with notable contributions from Freeman (1984), Brummer (1991), Donaldson and Preston (1995) and Clarkson (1995). Concurrent to and drawing on the management/organisation literature, stakeholder analysis was also being given increasing importance by policy scientists. A number of writers also draw upon the management/organisation literature, but put a policy angle onto subjects such as policy in natural resource management (Grimble et al, 1995; Holzknecht, 1996), health policy (Reich, 1994) and general public policy (Kingdon, 1984; Smith, 1993). As the literature on SD showed in chapter two, there has been an emphasis on participatory approaches to development and policy. This has meant a movement towards more inclusive stakeholder analyses to understand all stakeholder behaviours, interests, agendas, and influences on the decision-making processes. In particular, this has included the opinions of civil society and community groups (Brugha and Varvasovszky, 2000).

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3.5.2 Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analyses encompass or affect a number of organisations, groups, or people, whether the problem relates to planning, development, natural resource management or sustainability. Stakeholder analysis can be defined as

“…a methodology for gaining an understanding of a system and for assessing the impact of changes to that system, by means of identifying the key stakeholders and assessing their respective interests.”

(Grimble, 1998, p1).

This means that there is an issue or system that exists with numerous interested groups having a stake. This issue, problem or concern is not owned by any one group, therefore all stakeholders have some partial responsibility to act (Bryson, 2003). In this work, the issue is tourism development in the WBR. It is therefore important to identify stakeholders based on presence and influence (Blair and Fottler, 1990), which requires comprehensive mapping and analysis, techniques. Stakeholder analysis can also aid in the understanding of the various ranges of potentially differing stakeholder interests (Friedman and Miles, 2004). The following section examines and discusses some of the main techniques which can be used to build a picture of who has a stake in an issue or problem, what their interests may be and why they may approach concerns in a particular way. A description and rationale of the methods used to analyse the stakeholder discourses of STD in this case study is provided in the methodology chapter.

3.5.3 Stakeholder Identification and Mapping

There have been a number of descriptive, normative and instrumental methods which have been employed in a variety of situations to identify stakeholders, differentiate between them and investigate relationships between various stakeholder groups. A stakeholder analysis can be completed using a variety of methods. These include: focus groups; semi- structured interviews; snow-ball sampling; interest-influence matrices; stakeholder-led categorization; Q-methodology; actor-linkage matrices, social

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network analysis and knowledge-mapping (Reed et al, 2009).18 The process is usually an iterative one and can either be carried out with or without the participation of stakeholders and with varying levels of participation. This can range from passive consultation, whereby information is simply passed onto those carrying out the analysis, to active engagement, whereby analysts and stakeholders are seen as equals and there is a sharing of information. The latter is preferential as active engagement is more beneficial in helping to direct research aims and objectives (Rowe and Frewer, 2000) and is the chosen method in this study.

Stakeholder identification can also be either comprehensive (including everyone) or selective (including only a subset of the whole context). However, completing a comprehensive stakeholder analysis can be problematical as some may be accidentally omitted or the scope of the area of interest very broad and there being a large number of interested parties. An inclusive view of stakeholders is important in the interests of social justice argue (Bryson Cunningham and Lokkesmoe, 2002), although if the analysis is too selective, stakeholders who may be essential to understanding the problem and solving it can be left out. Therefore appropriate and thorough stakeholder identification and analysis is critical in understanding how development occurs in practice (West and Clark, 2006).

3.5.4 Active Stakeholders

Critical to this study is the notion of active stakeholders. Stakeholders can be split into two main groups, namely active and passive. To reiterate from chapter one, active stakeholders are those who affect decisions or actions, while passive stakeholders are those who are affected (either positively or negatively) by those decisions (Grimble and Wellard, 1997). This is pertinent to this study as it examines the discourses of those stakeholders who are active in STD in the WBR. This notion of active stakeholders is justified in the methodology chapter and then explored in the case study in the analysis chapters. This is one of the central aspects of this thesis and needs further

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Reed et al (2009) provide a description of all these methods along with resources required to complete them and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

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elaboration. The stakeholders in this thesis have a stake in tourism development either directly or indirectly. If these tourism stakeholders can affect decisions or actions regarding one of the three pillars of STD, then that makes them active. The previous chapter identifies the three pillars of sustainability – economic, social and environmental as being central to both the theoretical and practical debates surrounding both SD/STD.

The main stakeholder groups that are active within STD and therefore relevant to this study are: public sector organisations, private sector organisations, multilateral agencies such as the UN, civil society and NGOs. For example, business owners/managers can influence income and employment levels in an area. They may also have influence over land use and therefore their activities can impact upon resource use. NGOs or civil society organisations can also be active stakeholders in that they can affect decisions regarding the social aspects of sustainability such as quality of life and empowerment. Public sector officials can affect what is developed, where and at what pace and therefore they too can affect all three pillars of SD/STD. If stakeholders are active and can positively or negatively affect decisions regarding development concerns they also have some level of influence and power and this needs to be examined when analysing active stakeholders, hence the central theme of power throughout this thesis. These stakeholders and the decisions they take are not only affected by the macro context mentioned in the previous chapter, but their own ideologies and knowledge which affect their discourses.

The distinction between active and passive stakeholders however may not be absolute, as some groups, for example, certain local people may be involved in natural resource management in both active and passive ways (ibid). The substantial literature from organisational strategy is applicable in this context as stakeholder identification is widely used as a tool in strategic management to identify stakeholders to establish political priorities in terms of managing stakeholder relationships (Donaldson and Preston, 1995; Eden and Ackermann, 1998; Freeman, 1984; Johnson and Scholes, 1993; Mendelow, 1991).

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Stakeholder analysis in the development arena has predominantly focused on inclusivity and the empowerment of marginal groups in society. These could be groups such as the under-privileged, the socially disadvantage or those without access to well established, social networks (Johnson et al, 2004). These marginalised groups are mainly passive in the development process and are not the focus of the study. The rationale for this is expanded on in the methodology chapter, however Reed et al (2009) state that the analytical power of categorisation approaches can be improved by adding further attributes to the stakeholders. This is carried out in this thesis as a number of techniques listed below are used to analyse the stakeholders.

Stakeholder analysis should not only capture the nature of the problem and its boundaries, but also the levels of interest, influence, and power associated with different stakeholders (Hjortsø, Christensen and Tarp, 2005). These areas of influence may include a geographical area, a specific policy arena or a particular organisation. This is carried out in the micro context analysis in the following chapter where both the stakeholders and the geographical aspects of WBR are explored in more detail. When identifying stakeholders, this can also be done through identification by researchers, other stakeholders or by self-selection. Written records or documentation can also be analysed as can checklists of likely stakeholder categories (Chevalier and Buckles, 2008).