Stakeholder Dimensions

Each of these types of stakeholders will also vary across several dimensions, including power, interest, and vulnerability. Understanding how stakeholders vary on these dimensions is an essential part of facilitating stakeholder discussion about how to prepare for sea level rise.

×

Figure 12.5: A stakeholders matrix showing the dimensions of Power and Interest and related stakeholder management strategies. Stakeholder roles are shown at the top or bottom of each quadrant; management strategies for each role are shown at the quadrant's center.
Credit: Wikipedia: Stakeholder Analysis (CC0 1.0)

The diagram above shows how two of these dimensions – power and interest – can affect both the roles that stakeholders play in the decision making process and the strategies that government officials and other discussion leaders should use to manage how stakeholders with different roles participate. For example, county officials who are organizing meetings to discuss plans for managing sea level rise along the county's shoreline will need to closely manage those stakeholders who are both very interested in these plans and have strong social, political, or economic power in the county. By playing the role of "Promoters," these engaged and powerful stakeholders have the dedication and ability to easily steer the decision making process. In contrast, this framework suggests that meeting organizers should monitor the participation for the low power and low interest "Apathetics," but should not give them as much attention as the much more influential "Promoters." "Defenders," who have high interest but low power, should be kept informed throughout the decision making process; low-interest, high-power "Latents" should be kept satisfied.

Activate Your Learning

This exercise is not for credit but you are required to understand this material for the formal assessments in this module.

Imagine that the city you chose from the World Bank's list of vulnerable coastal cities is considering building a sea wall to protect its residents from sea level rise. For each of the three example stakeholders you identified earlier, consider the level of power and interest it would have in the discussion about whether to build the sea wall.

Then, in the blanks below, assign a role to each of the three stakeholders based on its position in the power-interest matrix: Apathetics (low power and interest), Latents (high power, low interest), Defenders (low power, high interest), or Promoters (high power, high interest). Finally, in a short response (about one sentence), explain why you chose this role for the stakeholder. Note: If you would like to retain your answers for these questions, please write/type your answers in another format that you can keep (i.e. paper and pen, word processing document, etc.)

First Example of a Stakeholder

Who is the stakeholder?

What is the Stakeholder role?

Why did you choose this role?

2nd Example of a Stakeholder

Who is the stakeholder?

What is the Stakeholder role?

Why did you choose this role?

3rd Example of a Stakeholder

Who is the stakeholder?

What is the Stakeholder role?

Why did you choose this role?

Considering the vulnerability dimension in addition to power and interest can change the suitability of these stakeholder management strategies considerably. For example, stakeholders termed "Apathetics" in the power-interest framework may also be highly vulnerable to sea level rise, and therefore demand more attention from those facilitating stakeholder discussion and debate. As discussed in Module 10, many factors – such as poverty or single parenting – can increase social vulnerability by increasing sensitivity or decreasing adaptive capacity for coastal hazards. These same factors may reduce stakeholder power or interest in discussions about how to prepare for sea level rise: those with limited financial or social capital may feel that they have neither the resources nor the time to worry about adapting to coastal hazards in the face of more immediate concerns. To ensure that these marginalized and highly vulnerable groups have a voice at the table, it may therefore be particularly important for facilitators to actively seek out and support their participation.