Modelling: stakeholders and authenticity

Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes (Part #14)

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A much-favoured metaphor for international strategy development and implementation is that of "stakeholder" -- as in multi-stakeholder roundtable (working group, conference, etc) or multi-stakeholder dialogue. Larry W. Smith, for example, discusses Project Clarity Through Stakeholder Analysis. In discussing the reality of multiple perspectives, Christopher Fox (Mental Models, Metaphor, Systems Theory and Theory) indicates:

Because each individual interprets the world and constructs their mental models differently, each person's mental models will provide them with unique perspectives onto the world. For example, in information systems projects, this manifests itself in two ways.

• Within each project, the different stakeholders will have different perspectives on what the desired outcome or goal of the project is. This manifestation of multiple perspectives underpins the role of corporate politics in projects.
• Each of the stakeholders in a project will have different perspectives on the nature of project management. These differences may result from differences between the systemic metaphors employed by the stakeholders or from other differences in their mental models which result from different past experiences.

Obeng (1994) offers a further basis for multiple perspectives with particular reference to project management, in his distinction between process stakeholders and outcome stakeholders. For both groups of stakeholders, project success is measured in terms of stakeholder satisfaction. However, for process stakeholders, stakeholder satisfaction is a function of the quality of the process by which the project was enacted, whilst for outcome stakeholders, stakeholder satisfaction is a function of the quality of the end-state reached by the project.

The use of the term stakeholder comes easily but the configuration that it implies is less evident. Are they to be considered as configured in a ring -- reminiscent of a "fairy ring" in mushroom country, from which the central seeding mushroom has disappeared? This is consistent with an understanding that an invisible Registrar has recognized their right to the claims that they each stake -- who recognizes the claims of stakeholders?

The paradoxical dimension of a stake becomes evident through reflection on the origin of the stakeholder metaphor -- in staking a claim to land for farming or mineral exploitation. The claimant places the stake into the ground with a suitable symbol of authorization attached to its other extreme -- and holds it in the middle (as dramatized in the Tom Cruise movie Far and Away, 1992). There is a paradox to the placement of a stake into the heart of the land to which indigenous others have a different relationship -- and then attaching a symbolism to this that is meaningless to them. Whilst this paradox may be more obvious in the case of claims on the lands and resources of indigenous peoples -- ensuring their enclosure -- there is a case for reflecting on the "territories" over which more conventional stakeholders seek to register and maintain their claims.

In the light of such claims on land territory, it is easily assumed that its analogues in social and knowledge space are similarly two-dimensional -- and can be so marked on a map. But the claims of modern stakeholders over social space are more complex, as is any configuration of them. They are also less constrained to a static territory and call for a more dynamic understanding of their respective spheres of influence.

In an earlier paper (In Quest of Uncommon Ground Beyond impoverished metaphor and the impotence of words of power, 1997), it was argued with respect to the stakeholder metaphor:

Little thought is given to building on this metaphor to suggest notions of links between stakes, as in fencing an enclosure -- fencing the commons? Nor is thought given to the ways in which stakes may be used (for the attachment of guy-lines and as poles) to ensure the erection and stability of a "tent" within which all can shelter and interact in new ways -- a three-dimensional spatial arena. Strangely stake "holding" implies that people will continue to cling to their respective stakes -- however a project takes form. It might even be asked whether the term is better understood as "steakholders", where each grabs a piece of "meat" from an ill-defined whole -- which might have otherwise been able to live. Far more interesting is the metaphorical exploration of the role of stakeholders in the construction of scaffolding through which social contexts of higher dimension can be created.

Some of these dynamic, three-dimensional approaches to stakeholding are more evident in the following models.

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