High Stakes: Lessons from stakeholder groups in the biodiversity conservation network

Research in common property, participatory resource management, and community development points to the central importance of organizational arrangements in conservation and development interventions. The dilemma facing contemporary conservation practitioners is how best to assist and facilitate such arrangements in support of participatory resource management and sustainable livelihoods, given the range of organizations, societal processes, and structures in which interventions might engage. This article presents some key findings from a study of stakeholder groups at 4 project sites, with information from a further 16 sites, in the Biodiversity Conservation Network: (1) Longstanding organizations had an established community niche, but could become bogged down in bureaucratic procedures; (2) poor communication between organizations was common and could undermine resource management; and (3) charismatic individuals and local elite interests could dominate groups, diminishing their representativeness. Based on these findings, the article argues that conservation professionals need to build their capacity as facilitators and negotiators, paying greater attention to how stakeholder groups form and function, their links to wider arenas, and the aims and positions of groups and individuals.

Public and stakeholder values of wildlife in Victoria, Australia

This paper explores the management implications of a recent study that was designed to explore public and stakeholder values of wildlife in Victoria, Australia. Questionnaires (n = 1431) were used to examine values and knowledge of wildlife held by residents from seven Victorian municipalities and members of six wildlife management stakeholder groups. The results suggest that most Victorians have a relatively strong emotional attachment to individual animals (the humanistic value) and are interested in learning about wildlife and the natural environment (the curiosity/learning/interacting value). In comparison, the negativistic, aesthetic, utilitarian-habitat and dominionistic/wildlife-consumption values were not expressed as strongly. These findings suggest that wildlife managers should expect support for wildlife management objectives that reflect the relatively strong humanistic orientation of Victorians and tailor management and education programs to appeal to this value and Victorians' interest in learning about wildlife.

Equal to life: empowerment through drama and research in a drama group for people with disabilities

This article draws from findings of qualitative research of a community- based drama and theatre group for adults with intellectual disabilities. The article considers constraints experienced by people with disabilities and explores the ways that experiences in drama and theatre can be particularly empowering for them. The article also reveals the ways that participants can increasingly become collaborators in the research and are empowered through the research process and through the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Stakeholder representation on the boards of Australian initial public offerings

This paper analyses the board composition of Australian initial public offerings (IPOs) over the period 1994 to 1997. The recent management literature identifies a wide range of stakeholders beyond the traditional shareholders. Evan and Freeman, and Jones and Goldberg suggest that the importance of stakeholders should be reflected in board representation. Luoma and Goodstein provide evidence of increased stakeholder representation on the boards of American companies. This paper studies Australian IPOs and finds that this is not the case. This suggests that capital raising by new lists in the Australian equity market does not require stakeholder representation on the board.

'Publics' or 'stakeholders'? Performing social responsibility through stakeholder software

Government and corporate organizations increasingly seek the support of the communities where they operate and represent themselves as good corporate citizens with a sense of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). These organizations seek to create and sustain dialogue with their many and varied ‘stakeholders’ and reject traditional ‘PR’ approaches that regard communication as a way to manipulate ‘target publics’. Some of these organizations use a form of ‘stakeholder software’ to guide and support their efforts to embrace CSR in their operations and this article examines two such software packages. It sets their use and the broader drive for CSR in the context of a diminishing trust in traditional institutions and a rise in new, extra-parliamentary forms of activism (new activism); and it examines stakeholder software’s potential contribution to a values-based approach to PR training in universities and colleges.

Engaging with stakeholders or constructing them? Attitudes and assumptions in stakeholder software

New activists are engaging in a range of extra-parliamentary activities, including extensive use of the internet, to create political change at local, national and international levels. As new activists become more effective, more sophisticated and, above all, more organised, traditional public relations or ‘PR spin’ is increasingly exposed as not just ineffective, but also an unethical way to respond to criticisms. But growing numbers of state and business organisations are trying to create new relationships with stakeholders that are inclusive, sustainable and aligned with the principles of corporate social responsibility (CSR). A range of stakeholder communication software packages claim to guide and support organisations wishing to create such relationships. However, these software packages can do more than merely offer guidance and support. They can actively influence how an organisation engages with stakeholders by embodying particular discourses that construct stakeholders as adversaries. This article examines two stakeholder software packages, showing how each one’s rhetoric of inclusion accompanies discourses that recreate adversarial relationships between organisation and stakeholders. The article sets such developments against the broad backdrop of developing notions of CSR, arguing that the uncritical use of stakeholder communication packages can reduce CSR to ‘more PR spin’.

Misuse of the term 'stakeholder' in public relations

This article queries the relatively recent adoption of the term 'stakeholder', borrowed from the UK political and the US business management spheres, in public relations academic writing. The article concludes that these spheres use the term in a normative or ideological manner that has worrying implications. The term frames people as having a pre-existing relationship with the governments or business organisations which name them as such. This process of incorporation prejudges and potentially obscures the real relations of groups of people vis-à-vis governments and business organisations which they may wish to have nothing to do with. An argument is mounted for the defence of the term 'publics'. It is pointed out that a key originator of stakeholder theory opposes the notion of 'publics' as closer to a notion of an uncontrolled audience. The article argues that the notion of 'publics' is more fitting than the notion of 'stakeholders' if public relations is about acknowledging this uncontrollability, and to do with advising organisations about their positioning in the democratic milieu. On the other hand, the notion 'stakeholders' may be the right one if public relations is simply aimed at immediately shaping people's behaviour, irrespective of longer term and wider political implications.

Rethinking empowerment: a postmodern reappraisal for emancipatory practice

This article is concerned with the implications of the postmodern challenge to critical theory for the practice of empowerment. How do we conceptualize empowerment from a postmodern perspective? It is argued that the modernist concept of power upon which empowerment rests, can have unintended disempowering effects. By conceptualizing power as a commodity, identities are forced into a powerful–powerless dualism which does not always do justice to diverse experiences. Thus we can sometimes contribute to dominance in spite of our liberatory intentions. It is argued that social workers need to become more aware of the self-disciplining and self-regulatory processes involved in professional work to address the social relations of power embedded in professional practices. Foucault's analysis of how marginalized knowledges are affected by dominant cultural practices suggests a redefining of empowerment as the insurrection of subjugated knowledge. The implications of this redefinition for practice is illustrated by reference to work with indigenous people in Australia.

Stakeholder involvement in the EMS adoption process

This paper summarises the findings of the qualitative part of a large study aimed at exploring the extent of involvement of organisational stakeholders (employees and suppliers) during the environmental management system (EMS) adoption process. Interviews with nine senior/middle managers from Australian manufacturing and service organisations revealed the growing awareness of the impact of their products and processes on the ecological and social environments. Moreover, implementation of an EMS or waste management system (WMS) is accepted as a learning curve by both the organisation and its stakeholders, including its employees. Organisations at the same time are also contemplating the need for certifying their existing EMS against international standards such as ISO 14001 based on the cost-benefits resulting from the certification.

Impact of an empowerment-based parent education program on the reduction of youth suicide risk factors

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of parent education groups on youth suicide risk factors. The potential for informal transmission of intervention impacts within school communities was assessed.

Methods: Parent education groups were offered to volunteers from 14 high schools that were closely matched to 14 comparison schools. The professionally led groups aimed to empower parents to assist one another to improve communication skills and relationships with adolescents. Australian 8th-grade students (aged 14 years) responded to classroom surveys repeated at baseline and after 3 months. Logistic regression was used to test for intervention impacts on adolescent substance use, deliquency, self-harm behavior, and depression. There were no differences between the intervention (n = 305) and comparison (n = 272) samples at baseline on the measures of depression, health behavior, or family relationships.

Results: Students in the intervention schools demonstrated increased maternal care (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.9), reductions in conflict with parents (AOR .5), reduced substance use (AOR .5 to .6), and less delinquency (AOR .2). Parent education group participants were more likely to be sole parents and their children reported higher rates of substance use at baseline. Intervention impacts revealed a dose-response with the largest impacts associated with directly participating parents, but significant impacts were also evident for others in the intervention schools. Where best friend dyads were identified, the best friend’s positive family relationships reduced subsequent substance use among respondents. This and other social contagion processes were posited to explain the transfer of positive impacts beyond the minority of directly participating families.

Conclusions: A whole-school parent education intervention demonstrated promising impacts on a range of risk behaviors and protective factors relevant to youth self-harm and suicide.

Analysis of stakeholder concerns with a view to avoid organisational conflict in B2B systems

In recent years there has been a remarkable increase in information exchange between organizations due to changes in market structures and new forms of business relationships. The increase in the volume of business-to-business (B2B) transactions has contributed significantly to the expanding need for electronic systems that could effectively support communication between collaborating organizations. Examples of such collaborating systems include those that offer various types of business-to-business services, e.g. electronic commerce, electronic procurement systems, electronic links between legacy systems, or outsourced systems providing data processing services via electronic media. Development and running of B2B electronic systems has not been problem free. One of the most intractable issues found in B2B systems is the prevalence of inter-organisational conflict reported to exist and persists between the participants of interorganisational electronic networks. There have been very few attempts, however, to prescribe any practical method of detecting the antecedents of such conflict early in B2B development to facilitate smooth construction and the subsequent operation of B2B services. The research reported in this paper focuses on the identification and analysis of antecedent conflict in a joint process involving different organizations in a B2B venture. The proposed method involves identification of domain stakeholders, capturing and packaging their views and concerns into a reusable form, and the application of captured domain experience in B2B systems development. The concepts and methods introduced in this paper have been illustrated with examples drawn from our study of six web-enabled payroll systems.

Aligning system requirements with stakeholder concerns : use of case studies and patterns to capture domain experience

Traditionally system development starts with the specification of system requirements. The focus of such an approach is on the system under construction, which is considered as of primary importance to the development success. The major problem with such an approach, however, is the neglect of concerns held by the various system stakeholders, whose opinions, loyalties and fears may impact considerably the perception and the reception of the implemented system, its functions and its features. Typically, stakeholder concerns are not collected or identified, and are viewed as of little significance in the system development process. In this paper, however, we present the case for recognising the value of stakeholder concerns, and their use in aligning business needs with system requirements. We describe a method of gathering and analysing stakeholder concerns across an application domain, and then packaging the development experience in dealing with these concerns into patterns. Experience patterns can subsequently be used to guide systems analysts in selecting the most appropriate requirements for the target stakeholder community.

Teaching for the `new work order`: empowerment or exploitation?

Vocational Education and Training (VET) programs addressing the needs
of workers in the ‘New Work Order’ have increasingly emphasised the development of communication, analytical, negotiation and decision- making skills over technical skills. Education for work has often been seen as a means of empowering workers to take up the opportunities available to them in the new ‘democratic’ workplaces of the last twenty years by developing the skills to contribute to workplace change through participation in collaborative decision-making processes. This paper is based on the findings of a study that explored the ways in which trainers take up and work within the current discourses of VET. Data from interviews with trainers as well as observations of them at work are analysed and presented in this paper to highlight the ways in which they inadvertently position their students as compliant and powerless workers, despite the rhetoric that learning- for-work will prepare them to become active agents of change in democratic workplaces. I argue that this contradiction is due, in part, to the ways in which the trainers’ classed identities intersect with discourses of VET in powerful and complex ways. Their understanding of work, learning- for-work and teaching- for-work is constructed and mediated through their social class positionings and is enacted through classroom practices.

Stakeholder engagement strategies : possibilities for the Internet?

The Internet offers companies new opportunities for engaging with stakeholders. This research examines the extent to which companies in Australia, Germany and the UK make use of their web sites to communicate both to and with their stakeholders. Particular attention is paid to the communication of ethical, social and environmental information on corporate web sites. Through a postal questionnaire and interviews, the research examines the drivers for web based reporting, the importance attached to stakeholder communication, complementary means of reporting to stakeholders and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the web as a communication medium. Despite the technological capabilities of web sites as communication media, we found the main purpose of developing corporate web sites was to raise corporate awareness and improve corporate image and that this is a negative force in the further development of corporate web sites for reporting ethical, social and environmental issues and using web technologies to engage with a broad range of stakeholders.