How to conduct a Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis aims to ensure that the widest possible range of stakeholders' opinions and needs are known, so that these can be considered in any future planning and/or decision-making, and to increase stakeholders' knowledge of the issues so that they are enabled to make informed contributions and decisions.

Stakeholder analysis seeks groups within the community that might otherwise be overlooked in the planning and decision-making processes will have their role as stakeholders recognised, their opinions heard, and their capacity to contribute to the planning and decision-making process enhanced.

Method:

1. Publicise a community issue and invite comment or submissions.
2. Prepare survey material that provides demographic data and inquires about the ways in which the issue affects the respondent.
3. Survey a wide cross-section of people living in a relevant geographic region (randomly selected).
4. Summarise the findings and plan a public meeting to give feedback to the largest possible number of the interviewees.
5. Present the findings at a public meeting, and invite comment and clarification. Organise to have sufficient expertise at this meeting to answer most questions that are likely to arise.
6. As a result of this feedback, modify the findings and include any further demographics or groups that have been discovered through the process.
7. Send back the findings to all previous interviewees, together with furthe questions arising from the public meeting.
8. Provide feedback to those planning or making decisions about the issue. This process allows an ongoing finetuning of the groups that are surveyed, and of the community's opinions. Also, this provides a process of education that increases community awareness of the issue, and answers their questions throughout the process.

Uses/strengths:

• Goes beyond the conventional ideas of who the stakeholders are to empower those who may otherwise be overlooked.
• Can be used to ensure that as few of the affected stakeholder groups as possible are overlooked in the opinion polling and planning processes.
• Can serve an environmental education role, increasing knowledge and awareness of an issue.
• Can increase social capital in a community or group by increasing people's capacity to contribute to the planning and decision-making processes.
• May reveal links and commonalities among groups that can lead to strategic alliances.

Special considerations/weaknesses:

• Can be expensive to undertake on a large scale.
• Needs to cast a wide net to ensure that it can include unexpected and unpredicted connections between groups and issues.