When evaluating the salience or importance of a stakeholder with respect to, for example, implementation projects, one has to take into account two critical dimensions;
(1) a stakeholders capacity or potential influence on the project or outcomes and (2) what the direction of a stakeholder’s intentions are in relation to the project; the direction. This can be visualized in terms of a vector, where the gravity or thickness of the vector is determined by the capacity of a stakeholder and the intentions are described by the direction of the arrow (e.g. towards or away from the project).
3.4 sTakeHolDer caPaciTy
In dynamic stakeholder theory, it is stated that the attributes (1) urgency, (2) power and (3) legitimacy are positively correlated to the earlier mentioned salience of stakeholders, as described by Mitchell (1997) and Bourne (2005) as “the degree to which managers (must) give priority to competing stakeholder claims”.
A definitive stakeholder possesses all three attributes; an expectant stakeholder possesses two; a latent stakeholder possesses one; and a non-stakeholder possesses none.
Their eight-way typology is dynamic, as stakeholders may shift from one class to another over time and across the issues facing the organisation (Brailsford, Bolt, Connell, Klein, & Patel, 2009), as is the case in our focus of the innovation journey that is undertaken by stakeholders. Bourne (2005) further expanded the framework of Mitchell et al. (1997) by arguing that urgency is dependent on a stakeholder’s vested stake in a project (e.g. innovation implementation) and the importance of the stakeholder to the project. Furthermore, instead of legitimacy, Bourne (2005) argues that the concept of proximity gives a better classification of a stakeholder’s salience (or priority as called in her articles).
mitchell’s attributes (mitchell, 1997) bourne’s corresponding attributes (bourne, 2005)
Power Power
Legitimacy Proximity
Urgency Urgency,
Calculated through scores on - vested stake
- importance to project
Salience Priority, resulting from other attributes
Table 5: The extension of the stakeholder classification model by Bourne (2005). figure 7: Capacity and intentions as a vector in relation to the project.
Project
intentions capacity
The constructs of both theoretical models of Mitchell et al. (2007) and Bourne (2005) are explained below.
Special attention must be given to the construct of power. Power reflects the influence the stakeholder may have over the situation and in affecting the out-come, irrespective of whether they have ownership or legitimate claim over it. Power may derive from the nature of a stakeholder’s organisation, or their formal position in relation to other stakeholders. Other forms of power may be more informal (for example, personal connections) (Mitchell, et al., 1997; Vasara, Krebs, Peuhkuri, & Eloranta, 2003). So, the construct of power is both dependent on formal position of a stakeholder and informal position (‘relational power’). This relational power is related to social network characteristics; when stakeholders have high degrees of centeredness, interrelatedness and out-degree, they are influential in their social network. (Vasara, et al., 2003). Centrality also highly correlates with informal power of a stakeholder (Ibarra & Andrews, 1993).
construct Definition
Power The extent to which stakeholders are able to persuade
or coerce others into making decisions, and following certain courses of action; having influence over the situation.
Dependent on
- Formal position (hierarchical position)
- Informal position (social network position; centrality) Urgency
as a result of a stakeholder’s - vested stake in and - importance to the project
Urgency is an indicator of the stakeholder’s perceived attitude towards the importance or intensity of the problem and need to deal with it. In other words; feeling strongly enough about an issue to act. There are two conditions to be met: - when a relationship or claim is of a time-sensitive nature
- when a relationship or claim is important or critical to the stakeholder
Legitimacy/proximity Legitimacy is used for the extent to which a stakeholder
has a legitimate right to be involved in the solution to the problem, with us taking an inclusive stance in the debate on whether such legitimate rights are based on authority, legal rights or by having ‘something at risk’ in the decision (Mitchell et al. 1997).
Table 6: A summary of dynamic stakeholder theory as discussed by Mitchell et al. (1997)
With respect to power, one can look at the role a stakeholder might have in relation to the innovation implementation. We hypothesize that a stakeholder with high power (both formal and informal) in a decisional role has more influence on innovation
implementation outcomes, than a stakeholder with high power but merely an informative role. Furthermore, a decisional stakeholder with low power will likely be dependent for his decisions of more powerful stakeholders. In conclusion, we argue that the role of a stakeholder might enforce and operationalize a stakeholder’s power. In other words, the power-function match or role appropriation (fit of the role) is related to the total influence of a stakeholder towards the innovation adoption. We hypothesize that the better the match of a stakeholder’s power levels with its formal role, the larger the influence of the stakeholder on innovation implementation outcomes, thus attributing to a stakeholder’s priority for attention for a governing body, like a project team. We will use this relation in our eventual theoretical framework.
One must also note that the dimension of urgency (vested stake/importance to) is a moderating construct for the other mentioned capacity constructs; it determines whether or not a stakeholder feels the need to enforce its power. We will leave this construct as part of the capacity domain since it relates to the decision whether or not to act (exerting power or not). It does not state anything about the direction of this acting; in the intentional domain we aim to focus on evaluating these directions.
So, strictly considered, only power and legitimacy determine a stakeholder’s capacity, that is moderated by a stakeholder’s urgency to enforce its capacity. In the remainder of our thesis, however, we want to investigate what this capacity might mean for our implementation and innovation success; urgency in that sense is crucial in determining the level of potential threat or support (or together; influence). Therefore, these dimensions in total determine the potential threat or support of a stakeholder; its potential influence. For that reason, we will consider all three dimensions (or four when demarcating urgency) as indicative of a stakeholder’s potential influence towards the project.
figure 8: The moderating role of urgency.
Power
capacity (potential influence) legitimacy
concluding remarks with respect to usability for our framework
When we evaluate the body of literature concerning stakeholder salience classification, limited attribute models can be found. Even though general stakeholder typology models are available, for example, to indicate active or passive stakeholders or internal or external stakeholders, this does not provide the level of detail to formulate engagement strategies in practice. The few attribute models available (e.g. the one of Mitchell et al. (1997) that do describe a certain prioritization of stakeholders based on influence attributes, lack the intentions dimension.
The salience attribute-models as discussed here are not found to be used much in empirical research; no studies are found in healthcare settings using the attributes of the dynamic stakeholder model. For our research, we need more information than just the classification of the stakeholder salience in terms of power, urgency or legitimacy. Knowing what stakeholders do matter needs to be evaluated in congruence with how a stakeholder feels, acts and behaves with respect to the object of study, in our case, an IT-based innovation. We therefore will seek for additional constructs to capture these issues. Nevertheless, the constructs of Mitchell et al. (1997), and later enhanced by Bourne (2005), give a great starting point for a stakeholder classification scheme.
The operationalization of these models, since they lack a strong empirical basis, still raises some concern. Only empirically tested questionnaires executed by Bourne (2005) were found in literature. Especially in the light of the complexity of the constructs, like a stakeholder’s power, this may lead to validity problems in operationalization of the model. The general classification framework of Mitchell et al. (1997) and Bourne (2005) is very suitable for evaluating stakeholder contexts, even though not much empirical study has been done in healthcare contexts. Building on the existing body of literature concerning dynamic stakeholder theory, we will attempt to gather empirical data on the constructs. At the same time, we will try to enhance the dynamic stakeholder model by arguing that more ‘intentional’ constructs are needed to evaluate a stakeholder environment in order to be of value for engagement strategies.
3.5 sTakeHolDer inTenTions
The salience of a stakeholder does not state much about its willingness or stance with respect to the innovation. For example, definitive stakeholders can both oppose or support the innovation. In terms of Mitchell’s constructs; the direction of the capacity constructs are not taken into account in the dynamic stakeholder model. Differences in intentions have substantially different effects on how a stakeholder’s capacity is enacted. According to Savage et al. (1991) beside a stakeholder’s power, a stakeholder’s intentions and values are essential to monitor to assess the potential impact of the stakeholder on the issue at hand. In other words, stakeholder willingness assessments may be used to define what kind of intentions a stakeholder may have.