Stakeholder commitment: Why is it important?
Across all organizations and projects, securing stakeholder commitment has its lofty rewards:
- Education organizations that cultivate stakeholder relationships are better positioned to incorporate technology-based solutions and practices that can have a transformational effect on learning, teaching, and managing, according to the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory of the US Department of Education.
- Stakeholder participation is essential for system design and the support and interaction of stakeholders would help in solving many societal problems, according to Russel Ackoff, an American systems scientist.
- The factor that determines levels of emergency aid will often be the degree of stakeholder commitment—the strength and persistence of the network humanitarian organizations operating on the ground
- Firms which create, and sustain stakeholder relationships based on mutual trust and cooperation will have a competitive advantage over other firms that do not act in this way (cf. Barney & Hansen, 1994)
How does one go about securing stakeholder commitment? One has to first define who the stakeholders are. Each organization has an array of stakeholders lined up—the PMBOK has a ready list—Project Manager, Customer, Performing Organization, Project Team members, and Sponsors. Generally, they are groups or individuals who have a stake in the success or failure of the project as a whole. Not just funders, they also include parties who are in contact with the project (e.g., audiences, competitors, and project employees).
They can also be grouped according to roles. There are five key roles that a stakeholder can play:
- Partners who support the project like contributing finance, staff, direction, etc.;
- Sponsors, like major funders;
- Advocates, who may not have any legitimate power to influence the project but have a stake in the outcome and can help maintain sponsor’s commitment;
- Change Agents who are involved in the operations like major suppliers and the project team; and
- Targets—the individuals or the groups affected by the project and are the focus of [change] efforts.
Listing and grouping the stakeholders are not enough to define who they are. It would help (and would be interesting) to determine their typology as well. This could help in “separating the chaff from the wheat,” as the typology exercise would clearly let you know who among the stakeholders could create real and lasting impact. Given the probable time and budget crunch, these are the types of stakeholders (and their interests) who can and need to be prioritized. They are the ones who have all three critical attributes, namely, power, legitimacy, and urgency. This type of stakeholder can be plotted in Figure 1 as the Definitive Stakeholder (Item 7 intersecting all parts of the diagram).
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