Stakeholder management

Stakeholder management (also project stakeholder management) is a critical component in the successful delivery of any project, programme or activity. A stakeholder is any individual, group or organization that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a programme. Project stakeholder management is considered as a continous process, specifically a four-step process of identifying stakeholders, determining their influence, developing a communication management plan and influencing stakeholders through engagement. Within the field of marketing, it is believed that customers are one of the most important stakeholders for managing a business's long-term value, with a firm's major objective being the management of customer satisfaction. The origin of stakeholder engagement can be traced back to the 1930s. In 1963, the Stanford Research Institute first defined the concept of stakeholder. In 1984, Edward Freeman’s book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach was published. It brought to existence a complete body of knowledge surrounding the ethical management of stakeholders. Soon thereafter, computers were used to facilitate the organizations' engagement with communities and stakeholder analysis. Seven "principles of stakeholder management" are linked with the work of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, developed at four conferences held between 1993 and 1998. Berman, Wicks, Kotha and Jones distinguish between two primary models of stakeholder management in business, an "instrumental" approach, according to which business managers engage with their stakeholders in order to maximise long term financial outcomes, and a "normative" approach, which identifies a stakeholder commitment as a moral obligation adopted by businesses, also referred to as an "intrinsic stakeholder commitment". Donaldson and Preston's academic work developed the normative approach, but while Berman et al.