THE EXPERTONS METHOD APPLIED IN THE
DIALOGUE WITH STAKEHOLDERS
Anna M. Gil Lafuente and Luciano Barcellos Paula
Faculty of Economics and Business. University of Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 690, 08034 – Barcelona, Spain
Keywords: Stakeholder Theory, Corporate Sustainability, GRI G3, Fuzzy Subsets, Expertons Method.
Abstract: According to numerous scientific studies one of the most important points in the area of sustainability in
business is related to dialogue with stakeholders. Based on the Theory of Stakeholder try to analyze
corporate sustainability and the process of elaboration a business report prepared in accordance with the
guidelines of the guide G3 - Global Reporting Initiative. With the completion of an empirical study seeks to
understand the expectations of stakeholders regarding the implementation of the contents of the
sustainability report. To achieve the proposed aim we use “The Expertons Method” algorithm that allows
the aggregation of opinions of various experts on the subject and represents an important extension of fuzzy
subsets for aggregation processes. At the end of our study, we present the results of using this algorithm, the
contributions and future research.
1 INTRODUCTION
The Stakeholder Theory postulates that a company's
ability to generate sustainable wealth over time and
thus its long-term value is determined by its
relations with its stakeholders (Freeman, 1984).
Donnelly, the stakeholder of a company is (by
definition) any group or individual who can affect or
is affected by the achievement of the objectives of
the organization. From Freeman, other authors
(Alkhafaji, 1989; Carroll, 1989; Brummer, 1991;
Clarkson, 1991; Goodpaster, 1991; Hill & Jones,
1992; Wood, 1991; Donaldson, T. and Preston, L.E.
1995; Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R. and Wood, D.J.,
1997; Post, J.E., Preston, L.E. and Sachs, S. 2002;
Rodríguez, M.A., Ricart, J.E. and Sánchez, P. 2002;
Aguilera, R.V. and Jackson, G. 2003; Hart, S.L. and
Sharma, S. 2004) have given primary emphasis on
the concept of the stakeholders. According to the
authors (Post, Preston and Sachs, 2002),
stakeholders of a firm are individuals and groups
who contribute voluntarily or involuntarily, to its
capacity and wealth creation activities and therefore,
are potential beneficiaries and / or risk bearers.
In the Stakeholder Theory (Olcese et al. 2008),
the enterprise is defined as a socioeconomic
organization formed to create wealth for the multiple
groups that compose it. The constructive
engagement of stakeholders (Elkington, J. 1998),
companies can increase external confidence in its
intentions and activities, helping to improve
corporate reputation and catalyze the diffusion of
more sustainable practices in the enterprise system
in general. In this new economy of stakeholders
(Olcese Santoja, 2009) we can speak of two types of
companies: traditional company and sustainable
company. Its characteristics can be differentiated as
described in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Differences between traditional company and
sustainable company.
The traditional company has a shareholder-
oriented approach to three stakeholders
(shareholders, employees and customers). Its
orientation is based to enhance the physical assets of
the company and their expectations are short term.
The only aim of the company is to maximize profits
and respond to shareholders. Furthermore,
sustainable company has a stakeholder-oriented
approach towards all interest groups that take part in
the business (shareholders, employees, customers,
402
Gil-Lafuente A. and Barcellos Paula L. (2010).
THE EXPERTONS METHOD APPLIED IN THE DIALOGUE WITH STAKEHOLDERS.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 402-406
Copyright
c
SciTePress
NGOs, governments, unions, local community,
groups of opinion and suppliers). Its orientation is
based to enhance tangible and intangible assets of
the company as part of the value of the company and
its long-term expectations are. It's a new way of
managing the company (Carrión, J. 2009) in which it
must develop strategies and policies through internal
codes of conduct to ensure that the development of
its regular activities will be sustainable and not
impact against the social rights and environmental
interest groups involved, while, to be taken into
account in defining their business strategies.
According to the Sustainability Reporting
Guidelines, version 3.0, Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI, 2006) participatory processes of stakeholders
can serve as tools to understand the reasonable
expectations and interests of those. The GRI says
that “an organization may encounter conflicting
views or differing expectations among its
stakeholders, and will need to be able to explain how
it balanced these in reaching its reporting decisions.
Failure to identify and engage with stakeholders is
likely to result in reports that are not suitable, and
therefore not fully credible, to all stakeholders. In
contrast, systematic stakeholder engagement
enhances stakeholder receptivity and the usefulness
of the report. Executed properly, it is likely to result
in ongoing learning within the organization and by
external parties, as well as increase accountability to
a range of stakeholders. Accountability strengthens
trust between the reporting organization and its
stakeholders. Trust, in turn, fortifies report
credibility”.
Because of the complexity that is dialogue with
stakeholders, is crucial to address the analysis with
an approach based on complex systems and models
that help entrepreneurs in making decisions,
especially in an uncertain environment. For these
reasons, it is justified to analyze the dialogue with
stakeholders using algorithms such as "The
Expertons Method” (Kaufmann, A. and Gil Aluja, J.
(1993). This method represents an important
extension of fuzzy subsets whose idea and
development is due to A. Kaufmann (1987). To
authors (Gil Lafuente et al., 2007) “the advance that
the expertons method represent in relation with other
instruments of treatment of the uncertainty comes
given by the fact that it allows simultaneously a
good aggregation of the opinion of several experts
and that these express their opinions with the
freedom provided by the fuzzy numbers”. We stand
out some authors have used fuzzy logic applied to
the sustainability as (Gil Lafuente, A.M. et al., 2005,
2006) in the analysis of organic purchasing decisions
of consumers, (Barcellos Paula and Gil Lafuente,
2009a) in the selection of elements that contribute to
sustainable growth of the company, (LU LYY et al.,
2007) in the analysis of decision and evaluation of
"green" suppliers, and (Barcellos Paula; and Gil
Lafuente, 2009b) in algorithms applied in the
sustainable management of the human resources.
2 METHODOLOGY
Now, very briefly, how to build an Experton from
their properties. We know that everything has the
property Experton monotony Loose growing
horizontal, i.e., the characteristic function of
belonging of the function of positive slope is less
than or equal to the characteristic function of
belonging of the downward-sloping. And moreover
all vertical growing Experton has no strict
monotony, except in level 0 which always takes the
value 1. Therefore, we say:
21
:1,0 aa
in
21
,aa
(1)
´))()(´),()(´:1,0´,
2211
aaaa
(2)
1,1)()0(
21
aa
(3)
We consider the valuation of each expert
expresses a level of truth by scale of 11 values
between 0 and 1 both included that can be explained
generically as follows:
0:
0.1:
0.2:
0.3:
0.4:
0.5:
0.6:
0.7:
0.8:
0.9:
1:
From here will start a process of aggregation led
to the transformation of opinions in a representative
of the previous valuation. The first task will be to
obtain the statistics of the opinions to know the time
that experts have expressed the same opinion. From
the obtained cumulative frequency is the calculation
of the cumulative relative frequencies for the above
values by dividing the total number of views. The
result is called “Experton”. Its significance lies not
only in obtaining the relative frequencies assigned to
the characteristic function of belonging, but that the
information provided enables the distribution and
THE EXPERTONS METHOD APPLIED IN THE DIALOGUE WITH STAKEHOLDERS
403
the tendency of subjective opinions about whose
number can be very variable. The Experton is itself
an aggregate view representative of all that have
been considered in the sample. In order to give a
simplified representation of an Experton, can be
used to obtain the mathematical expectation. All
operators can be used with variable or confidence
intervals in [0,1] can also be used Experton, and
these operations are valid for any number of
Experton.
3 APPLICATION OF THE
EXPERTONS METHOD
Our study focuses on knowing the expectations of
stakeholders with respect to compliance with the
contents of the sustainability report prepared by a
company in accordance with the guidelines G3 -
Global Reporting Initiative. To achieve this
objective will try to analyze the sustainability of a
business catering sector through a survey conducted
in August 2009 by the Ideas and Solutions
Consulting in Brazil. At the request of the
contractor, the study data were treated with strict
confidentiality. Therefore, as suggested by the
Guidelines version 3.0, Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI), the company to develop its “Sustainability
Report” must be engaged in an extensive network of
experts from various interest groups among which
include business organizations, workers, NGOs,
investors and auditors, among others. The
consultancy contract was charged with gathering a
selection of interest groups, composed of 10 experts
on a panel to discuss Corporate Social
Responsibility issues that have been predefined. The
aim is to examine the basic content of the GRI,
which stands out among social performance, and
produce one or more outcomes, such as comments or
recommendations, which the company may or may
not establish specific commitments. Once submitted
to the 10 experts the contents of the Performance
Report on Social Sustainability, ask that you indicate
your view with the scale [0,1], whereby, as the
closer estimate 1, the better the meeting the
expectations of stakeholders in the following items:
1- Labor practices and decent work
2- Human rights
3- Society
4- Product responsibility
4 RESULTS
The approach that follows is based on the
consideration of elements and data emerging from a
real demand. The results may allow for deep
reflection and application to academic and
professional fields.
According to data collected by the consultant
would have the views of 10 experts, as shown in
Table 1.
Table 1: Views of 10 experts.
The first task will be to obtain the statistics of the
opinions to know the time that experts have
expressed the same valuation (Table 2).
Table 2: Cumulative Frequency.
From the obtained cumulative frequency is the
calculation of cumulative relative frequencies (Table
3) dividing the above values by the total number of
views, in our case 10.
Table 3: Cumulative relative frequencies.
CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
404
The result is called "Experton. The Experton is
itself an aggregate view representative of all that
have been considered in the sample. In order to give
a simplified representation of an Experton, can be
used to obtain the expected value (Table 4).
Table 4: Expected value.
The result identifies the expectations of
stakeholders about the content of the sustainability
report related to corporate social performance
through the aggregation of views. In this case, we
observe a very large distance between the
expectations of stakeholders with the draft
sustainability report being prepared by the company.
Therefore, the company needs to devote special
attention to the contents related to “labor practices
and decent work” and “human rights" valuation
receiving 0.4 and 0.5 respectively. The items
"society" and "product responsibility" valuation
were 0.6 and 0.7 respectively. The proposed model
can be extended in accordance with the requirements
of questions and the number of participating experts
and business sectors.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The study on corporate sustainability shows that
compared with the changes we are living is essential
to find models that will help employers in making
decisions, especially in an uncertain environment.
Because of the complexity that is the search for
more sustainable development through dialogue with
stakeholders in our research we try to analyze these
complex systems using fuzzy logic. In implementing
the proposed model, we provide a tool based on the
use of “Method of Experton”. This methodology can
facilitate decision making by obtaining qualitative
data from a dialogue with various stakeholders. This
is an innovation and a useful tool to be used in the
processes of aggregation and unification of views or
differing expectations among its stakeholders. The
model also allows to know the distribution function
at levels characteristic of belonging to the aggregate
values. The result show that has provided us with the
expectations of stakeholders regarding the
implementation of the contents of the sustainability
report. Now the company must revise their
commitments and related management approach
social issues, such as “labor practices and decent
work” and “human rights".
The main contribution of this paper is to provide
a model that assist entrepreneurs in the aggregation
of opinions related to the stakeholders. At the same
time, as the GRI G3, the company serves as
documentation and explanation of how it has
evaluated such factors when drafting the report. We
believe that our contribution will serve to support
future research in the field of sustainability in
business and the application of the methodology in
dialogue with stakeholders.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Luciano Barcellos de Paula is as a scholar of
MAEC-AECI.
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