Introduction
Under the era of globalization and raising public awareness, the stockholderâs engagement has turned into a very strapping issue, which is the essential address for any successful project management in the context of environmental issues and the social assessment process. Day to day stakeholder engagement is rising as a resource of addressing a wider and inclusive as well as nonstop process connecting a company and threatens influences that encompass a range of actions move towards the implication as well as the entire life of the project.
This project would critically examine the role of stockholder engagement in modern project management that operates in the public and private sectors. The paper has aimed to identify the factors that support successful engagement in a project to develop a framework to assist the management for monitoring and get better the processes of stockholderâs engagement along with theoretical framework and practical evidence.
Literature review of Stakeholders Engagement
Who are the stakeholders?
Freeman (1984) explained that the Stakeholder is the individual or group who is in a straight line or circuitously exaggerated through the implementation of a project including the others who have benefits and welfare from that project in addition who has capabilities to influence the outcomes of the project positively or negatively. Key (2004) added that stakeholders may comprise the neighborhood populace of the project and affected communities otherwise individuals with their prescribed representatives such as national or else local government agencies, community, and political leaders, special interests groups, civil society, the academia and businesses concerns.
Checkland (1981) expressed his views that the âstakeâ of each different folks and group has in a particular project and its investment would differ in various ways for instance there are many citizens who are directly affected using the potential environmental as well social collisions of the project. On the other hand, there is the resident of another country but interested to exchange their views, concerns, and suggestions to the said project. IFC (2007) added that some individuals possibly have a greater influence upon the project like government agencies, non-governmental organizations, political institutes, ethnic groups, and other activists of the local communities. Moreover, there is another kind of stakeholders, who keeps their efforts with knowledge and experience and contributes optimistically to the project implementation by performing as a sincere negotiator to mediate relationships and resolute conflicts.
Burgoyne (1994) pointed out that stakeholders engagement analysis is a qualitative method of organizational research that endow an outline of several other bases of stakeholder analysis together with the political economy such as the impression of how the united preferences of abundant individuals are used for cost-benefit analyses of natural resource or social projects. RamĂrez (2004) added that the stakeholder analysis is the resultant of the participatory technique of project design for rapid and participatory consideration that has aimed to incorporate the interests and standpoints of both deprived and privileged groups of the society.
What is engagement?
Larson and Williams (2009) argued that the promising idea in both theory and practice of engagement could mostly merge inside two bodies of knowledge and these are as follows:
- The engagement as a scheme and a set of guidance to practice to connecting the local communities as well as the public within a particular project planning or else other activities
- The engagement is a move toward an ideology with a specific philosophy aimed at community development.
Thus, the engagement could be defined either as a process or even as a guiding opinion where both the two above approaches of engagement are to some additional extent conducted by the object of engagement (Buchy and Race 2001).
Sick (2002) added that in the cases of engagement where it has initiated aimed to a particular issue for a definite planning practice of infrastructural progress, generally, it takes care of involving of the stakeholders. Engagement also works as a technique for elucidating the local norms, values, and knowledge including the process of conflict resolution as well as gaining trust and amplified public reception to the project. IFC (2007) pointed out that conducting, monitoring the features related to engagement is comparatively straightforward where the processes are short-run and typically measured with local scale as well as the aim, and objectives are clear to set to motivate the stakeholders.
Cassell and Symon (1994) pointed out another category of engagement and that is the day-to-day guiding principle designed for communications connecting the organization and its stakeholders. This assortment of engagement is very hard to conduct due to the monitoring engagement times are lengthy and over and over again indefinite. In such conditions, the scale of the engagement effort starts from local to the national level and the purposes of this engagement may not be noticeable and supposed as of modest significance where the outcomes are unavoidably experimental and motivation of stakeholders to participation are likely to be missing (Freeman 1984).
Checkland (1981) noticed that the establishment of the ownership of the course of action and outcomes of the procedure has extremely brought key motivations for project and policy promotes to engage with the stakeholders.
Levels of Stakeholders engagement
Larson and Williams (2009) mentioned that the Stakeholder’s engagement for natural resources management is continuously increasing all over the globe and has been considered as a part of basic human rights. ACSI (2004) supported this view saying that because of the human rights awareness to a convinced stage of environmental quality, everyone has the right to support or protest as well as free political participation for and against the project. AcountAbility (2005) clarified that on the other hand, the levels for which the stakeholders have engaged and what are the categories and methods of their engagement are also significant. Burgoyne, J. G. (1994) explained that the diverse techniques and approaches that could be applied taking into account on what the organizational aim and quite a lot of hierarchies of engagement categories and levels have already developed.
Buchy and Race (2001) explored that the engagement ranges from the lower level of engagement to the mid-level where the participants are mixed up within the decision-making process where the principally prearranged questions are raised to drive to the higher end scale with stakeholders. These levels undertake their initiatives to enable the development of strapping leadership roles and towards enhanced engagement practices.
Warburton et al (2006) discovered that having defined and corresponded ideas the organizations would assess the level of engagement where the most significant step is assessing and monitoring the engagement process by mapping engagement scales and adapting management cycles.
Challenges for Stakeholders engagement
Renard (2004) pointed out the challenges of Stakeholders engagement those the natural resource managers, project managers, development workers, planners, and academics face to address stakeholder issues for planning and management needs, these areas:
- Most of the time the stakeholders stay in a location where they are almost kept themselves hidden due to the process of the stakeholder identification and even cover up their authentic stakes within the management circle and traditionally this âself-exclusion is one of the very common forms of popular confrontation in opposition to repressive and unfair schemes;
- Some populaces have no trust in the government itself and its agencies due to their frequent deceived actions, broken promises, and wrecked commitments;
- The identification and analysis of Stakeholder engagement has aimed to notify the management through extracting major facts of shortening social realities, which are exceptionally complex;
- The individuals are constantly belonging to numerous groups where the entire societies and communities have structured with multiple networks and the practices of stakeholder identification and analysis is not possible to perform simple but understandable by the similar interests group of stakeholders that are conflicting with each other;
- It is essential for management objectives to be very comprehensible before commissioning a stakeholder analysis and argued implementing the consultation with major management partners and sponsors.
Stakeholder Engagement: a Case Study of UK
Townsend and Tully (2004) mentioned that the UK the legislation has aimed to amplify with more Stakeholders engagement such as in land-use planning system and natural resource management as well as to the introduction of new legislations are generated through an intersection with the extraordinary levels of public comments with the issuance of current Governmental Green Paper about any Planning. Warburton et al (2006) added that the planning process in the UK has tinted as weakness of public participation as well as Stakeholders engagement in the UK planning method despite a clear suggestion on environmental issues and emphasized for participation that is more public. The UK Department of Constitutional Affairs has set out to measure the extent of public interest and concerns in the Planning system based on the contemporary proposals to revise with a public opinion before placing in the parliament considering the more public satisfaction with the process with the fair trail. This section of the report aims to evaluate the stakeholdersâ engagement agenda set out for changing public participation within the participatory planning in of the UK and principally applicable due to modern recommendations to boost sustainability among the communities with a few qualitative case studies from planning authorities and pubic projects of the UK.
Stakeholders Engagement Case: Noise Pollution Heathrow Airport
BAA (2010) reported that the noise pollution from Heathrow airport has become one of the major concerns for the populace around the airport whilst the Heathrow airport authority carried on far better technology as well as design used to reduce but all these efforts have been failed to counterbalance and develop the situation due to raising in flights last three decades.
BAA along with the government has been working hard with the airlines to administer and mitigate the belongings of aircraft noise at Heathrow and with a long track record of some achievement. These efforts included a voluntary accord with airlines to prevent the scheduling of highly noisy types of aircraft at night and consequently the situation as little bit change. Initiatives taken by the authority has designed to offer cheap landing costs for the airlines that have lower sound pollution and at the same time, a draft Noise Action Plan has been setting out to Stakeholders engagement to finding the way how to manage the collision of aircraft noise pollution by the next 5 years.
The Stakeholders Engagement resulted in the design of strategic noise mapping with the present noise impact of the airport operations and public viewpoints on the current control measures that have already been applied. It also created awareness to follow the Environmental Noise Regulations – 2006 without disturbing the range of economic factors of the airport, which has contributed to the nation as a significant economic generator, large job provider, persuading inward remittance and investment and enhancing tourism. The Department for Transport has been engaged to directly administer noise policy at Heathrow and has conventional for a range of operational controls as well as statutory objectives to reduce noise by engaging the stakeholders within the next five years in 2015.
Gifford (2007) mentioned that the UK government has commissioned the Myners Report that argued for just meeting senior managements to articulate the civil reservations regarding any governmental strategy and would not be sufficient to implement until the public option has been taken into account. Moreover, the UK legislation with corporate governance under the company act 2006 has ensured the effective engagement of stakeholders.
Conclusion
The key learning outcomes from this report are that it has evidenced in the stakeholder’s engagement would be treated as primarily depend on core reasons for which the engagement took place. In most current years, there are distinguished changes towards Stakeholders engagement and its learning to building capacity, and gaining sustainability by mitigating conflicts among the communities and within organizations. The Stakeholder’s engagement monitoring and evaluation scheme would be very clear and fully engross with the diverse project of stakeholders and staff all through the system level and the system should be designed with criteria to make obvious that the organizational objectives have been properly addressed both in external and internal compliance. The implementing bodies and stakeholders are paying attention to the quality of engagement and emphasis to improve shortly.
Reference
AcountAbility (2005) Stakeholder Engagement Standard. Web.
ACSI (2004) Stakeholder Engagement Planning. Web.
BAA (2010) Environmental Noise Directive Draft Noise Action Plan 2010-2015 For public consultation â 2009. Web.
Buchy, M. & Race, D. (2001) The twists and turns of community participation in natural resource management in Australia: What is missing? Journal of Environmental Planning & Management. Vol. 44, issue 293.
Burgoyne, J. G. (1994) Stakeholder Analysis. 2nd ed. Sage Publications.
Cassell, C & Symon, G. (1994) Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research: A Practical Guide. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Checkland, P. (1981) Systems Thinking, Systems Practice: Includes a 30-Year Retrospective. John Wiley & Sons.
Freeman, R. E. (1984) Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Pitman Publishing, Boston.
Gifford, J (2007) How Stockholders Can Effectively Engage with Companies. Web.
IFC (2007) Stakeholder Engagement. Web.
Key, S. (2004) Toward a new theory of the firm: a critique of stakeholder theory”. Web.
Larson, S. & Williams, L (2009) Monitoring the success of stakeholder engagement. Web.
Renard, Y. (2004) Guidelines for Stakeholder Identification and Analysis: A Manual for Caribbean Natural Resource Managers and Planners. Web.
Sick, D. (2002) Managing Environmental Processes Across Boundaries: A Review of the Literature on Institutions and Resource Management. Web.
Townsend, A. & Tully, J. (2004) Modernising Planning: Public Participation in the UK Planning System. Web.
Warburton, D. et al. (2006) Making a difference: a guide to evaluating public participation in central government, Department for Constitutional Affairs, UK. Web.