Identifying Stakeholders
Most people distinguish between two types of stakeholder:
- Primary stakeholders; those who are most closely related to the organisation and without whom the organisation couldn’t survive(1)
- Secondary stakeholders; the organisation could exist without them, but they still play an influential role on the organisation(2)
Internal
- Directors
- Senior executives
- Home based/Overseas/Field office representatives
- Employees – permanent & part time
- Unions
External
- Creditors
- Advisors – banks, lawyers, consultants
- Customers
- Government (Local, National, European and its agencies
- Investors (could be considered as Internal stakeholders)
- Shareholders/Owners (could be considered as Internal stakeholders)
- Suppliers
- Competitors
- The community
- International community
- Pressure groups/NGOs/Charities
- Trade Associations
- Media – TV, Radio, Press, Internet
Very often there are specific stakeholders relating to an industry sector or geographical area.
Below is a core list of stakeholders drawn up when considering a water privatisation programme in Sri Lanka. From this you can see how the generic ‘water users’ can be broken down into much smaller units. This allowed us to consider much more carefully targeted messages, in this case across three languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English) where each message had to be tested against the colloquialisms within each language.
- Pipe born users
- Tube well users
- Protected well users
- Unprotected well users
- River/tank/stream users
- Bowser users
- Those without a water source
- Those who provide their own ie: eco hotels such as Kandalama.
- Irrigation users such as paddy farmers, market gardeners, drip irrigation farmers
- Industrial users
- Export processing zones users
- Domestic users.
Power/Interest Matrix
The Power/Interest matrix helps you to decide which stakeholders are most important for your communications plan/strategy.
LEVEL OF INTEREST |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
Low |
High |
||
POWER |
Low |
Low interest and low power, so you need to have minimal input here |
They have a high level of interest, but low power, so keep them informed. |
High |
High power, but low interest. Keep them happy. |
Your most important stakeholders, so talk to them. |
|
You will need to decide the degree of interest and power leveraged in your organisation. Shareholders, for example, are likely to fall into the high interest, high power box as are employees. High interest but low power may be suppliers.
Unless there is a crisis which affects them, politicians may fall into the low interest, low power box. However, with a crisis which affects them directly they could move into a high interest, high power box, i.e. banking community and economic crisis.
Engagement/Understanding chart
Another useful tool for you to understand more about your stakeholders is to build an Engagement/Understanding chart. Like the power/interest matrix, stakeholders can move around with time. Your aim here is to move all key stakeholders up the chart (in the direction of the arrow) so that they have high levels of understanding of your organisation as well as being actively engaged. A stakeholder who is actively engaged and has low levels of understanding is a dangerous prospect.
There is a big difference between knowing the theory and making it happen. For help in implementing your communications practices email us now.
(2) The community, politicians, pressure groups.
