A Component-based Method for Stakeholder Analysis

Yu-Chun Pan, Yinshan Tang and Stephen Gulliver

Informatics Research Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6UD, U.K.

Keywords: Stakeholder Analysis, Component-oriented, Product Breakdown, Product-oriented.

Abstract: Stakeholders can facilitate or hinder an organisation’s performance significantly. The identification and

management of the stakeholder is one of the key business activities for organisations. Although stakeholder

identification is the first step of stakeholder analysis, there is little attention paid to the methodologies for

stakeholder identification. This paper uses a system view point and proposes a component-based method for

stakeholder identification and analysis, which focuses on the artefacts as linkage between different sub-

systems of an organisation. Stakeholders, identified through components, include the processors who

produce, use, communicate and control the component making process. The identified stakeholders can then

be mapped into a stakeholder relationship map according to the components that are being used to identify

the stakeholders. This method provides a novel approach to identify stakeholders through artefacts and

define stakeholder relationship, through the artefacts they are involved in. Hence, it provides a

comprehensive and better understanding of stakeholder management.

1 INTRODUCTION

The term stakeholder refers to individuals or groups

that affect, or are affected by, the achievement of an

organisation’s goals. Stakeholder analysis is the

process of identifying all stakeholders and sorting

them in a desired fashion (Freeman, 2010).

Stakeholder analysis normally starts with

stakeholder identification which includes engaging

with domain experts, brainstorm self-selection,

engaging internal staff, analysing existing

documents, or using pre-defined stakeholder

checklist (Calvert, 1995); (Chevalier and Buckles,

2008). Most stakeholder identification approaches

rely significantly on the experience and

interpretation of the analysts.

Once stakeholder identification is completed,

stakeholders are then categorised. Some commonly

used categorising parameters include urgency,

legitimacy, power (Mitchell et al., 1997), levels of

directness of the influence (Liu, 2000), degrees of

interest and influence (De Lopez, 2001); (Eden and

Ackermann, 1998), internal or external forces, roles

of stakeholders (Freeman, 2010), responsibilities

(Kamal et al., 2011), position (Preston and Sapienza,

1990) and perceptions and concerns (Ockwell,

2008). Most stakeholder analysis methods define

stakeholders by their activities or their influence on

the unit system.

Whilst looking at the elements within an

organisation, there are activities, artefacts and

human beings involved. Whilst the majority of

stakeholder analysis methods focus on the activities

and human beings, there is little attention placed on

artefacts. Amongst the artefacts, materials, parts,

components and products are objects that are

modified and processed by activities. For artefacts to

move along the production pipe, every artefact

instance depends on a process normally involving

human beings. Hence, the relationship between

artefact instances can be used to reveal the

relationship between human beings.

This paper focuses on the linkage between

artefacts and proposes a component-based method

for stakeholder analysis. We define the relationship

between outputs and components, to develop a

system view of organisations. The component-based

product structure can then be utilised to identify the

stakeholders and examine stakeholder relationship.

2 OUTPUTS, ORGANISATIONS

AND STAKEHOLDERS

2.1 System View of Organisations

The concept of ‘a system’ has been widely adopted

290

Pan Y., Tang Y. and Gulliver S..

A Component-based Method for Stakeholder Analysis.

DOI: 10.5220/0004167302900293

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2012), pages 290-293

ISBN: 978-989-8565-31-0

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

across numerous fields to provide a logical way for

analysis and management. An organisation can be

seen as a system that has inputs, processes, and

outputs and also contains various parts integrated to

accomplish the shared goal (Senge, 1990). The

system view enables management to view the

organisation in flows, processes and relationships, to

achieve optimal results (Seddon, 2008). The flows,

processes and relationships in a system are usually

defined by the sequence of activities and tasks.

Hammer and Champy (1993) defined business

process as a collection of activities with a goal that

takes one or more types of input to create a valuable

output to the customer. Eriksson and Penker (2000)

argued that business process focuses on addressing

how work is performed rather than describing the

output of a process. This process/task-centric

approach does not necessarily consider the artefacts

processed and modified in the system.

Artefacts, however, can also be seen as the

linkages in a system, as artefacts within a system can

normally be defined at the input and output of the

sub-systems inside the system. The sub-systems pass

artefacts from one sub-system to another; with the

output of one sub-system acting as the input of its

succeeding sub-system. By focusing on the input

and outputs between sub-systems, a more artefact-

centric perspective for examining organisations

emerges. In order to understand organisations from

an artefact-centric perspective, it is necessary to

define artefacts within an organisation, as well as the

relationships between those artefacts.

2.2 Outputs and Components

The output of a system is the desired artefact of the

system’s customer. The outputs include both the

products of routine works and those from projects.

An organisation, as a system that has input and

output, could have various sub-systems that perform

part of the sum of tasks required for the production

process. Materials and parts are therefore modified

and passed from one sub-system to another, which

ultimately defines the total supply chain of the

organisation. By viewing the supply chain of a

product as an analysis unit, an organisation can be

conceptually structured into segments based on the

parts that each supply chain produces. The output

requires various parts and components to be

processed and modified, along the chain. Outputs

must therefore be broken down into components.

Each component is formed by sub-components,

which can also be seen as components on a smaller

scale. The term ‘component’ refers to any type of

raw materials (or services) or parts that are required

in order to deliver a output that is desired by the end

customer of a system. The breakdown of the output

into components should reflect the interaction of

suppliers in the supply chain, and should stop at the

level where the component is still meaningful to the

system.

There is an interdependent relationship between

the output and its components. Components are

needed to produce an output and the component

would not be produced if there were no demand for

it. A component, however, can be used within the

production of more than one output. The more

outputs a component contributes to, the less

dependent a component is on a specific output. On

the other hand, the completion of an output depends

on the availability of its components. When a

component becomes unavailable, potentially the

production of the product would also have to stop,

unless an alternative equivalent component could be

found. The alternative component might already

exist in the system supply chain, yet it is possible

that this will have to be sought from a supplier

currently outside the system. If there is no

alternative for a specific component, then output

production is highly dependent on supplier securing

future component production.

2.3 Stakeholders and Components

A component is made-up of its sub-components,

which in turn requires processors to transform those

sub-components into the component. The activities

within an organisation can be classified into

substantive activities, communication activities and

control activities (Liu, 2000). All activities are

processed, or are managed, by human beings. Hence,

there are people who conduct substantive,

communication and control activities for each

component. Substantive actionees are those who

make the component and supply it to another sub-

system; control actionees control the production

activities; and communication actionees

communicate on behalf of the component with

related sub-systems during the production process.

Apart from those people, there are a group of people

who benefit from the component, and they are the

beneficiaries. Beneficiaries include those who

benefit economically from the component and those

who receive the component.

Due to the direct linkage between a component

and its stakeholders, the stakeholders of the output

are naturally identified. Hence, an output to

components structure diagram inevitably reveals the

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stakeholder relationship of a given set of outputs and

components.

3 COMPONENT-BASED

STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

3.1 Defining Unit System

The first step of component-based stakeholder

analysis is to define the unit system. Defining the

unit system helps us to scope the analysis. A unit

system is the focal centre for the stakeholder

analysis; it may relate to specific product, part of an

organisation, the whole organisation, or even a

whole industry; depending on the purpose of the

stakeholder analysis.

3.2 Identifying Outputs of Unit System

Once the unit system is defined, the analyst needs to

identify the outputs, i.e. those produced by the unit

system for its customers. The outputs can be either

tangible goods or intangible services.

3.3 Component-based Structure

Component-based output structure de-

compartmentalises the output into components. Each

component can contain rich information about the

component in terms of processors, related outputs,

location etc. This rich information, at the component

level, can then be used to provide analysis

concerning each component part and/or the output as

a whole. The output de-compartmentalisation

process should stop at the level where the

component is still meaningful and useable to the unit

system. Tangible goods can easily be broken down

into components, since the materials and parts can

be physically identified. However, the component-

based product structure of intangible services might

be less straightforward. It might be a piece of

information, a service that contributes to the service

or tangible goods offered as part of the service.

For instance, a department at a university plans

to offer a new degree programme, MSc International

Management. The new degree programme as an

output contains components including degree

modules, supervision, programme support, lecture

rooms, academic staff, administration staff, and

students. A newly designed degree is an intangible

output, but it contains both tangible and intangible

components.

3.4 Component Description

Once the component-based output structure is

produced, a component description is needed to

identify the stakeholder and the link between outputs

and components. A component description should

contain information including component name,

unique identifier, sub-components, substantive

actionees, communication actionees, control

actionees, beneficiaries and contributed outputs.

More columns, such as date of production and

location of component, can be added as needed

depending on the nature of the component. The

component description provides essential

information based on the component, and therefore

enables component-based stakeholder identification,

analysis and component planning.

Table 1: Component description example.

Component description

Component name Strategic Management

Unique identifier MMM0002346

Sub-components

needed

Lectures, Text books, Exams,

Substantive actionees Module convenor

Communication

actionees

Programme administrator

Control actionees

Board of study, Head of school,

Programme director

Beneficiaries Students, University, Department

Contributes to

MSc International Management,

MSc Marketing and International

Management

Table 1 is an example component description for

the module, strategic management, as a component

of the new MSc degree programme. The component

description shows all the stakeholders and

component related information.

3.5 Identifying Stakeholders

Stakeholder information is included within the

component description, i.e. substantive actionees,

communication actionees, control actionees and

beneficiaries. Analysis can therefore identify all of

the stakeholders, and production processes, through

the component description and relationship between

components. In the example component description

shown in Table 1, the stakeholders identified

through the module would be module convenor,

programme administrator, board of study, head of

school, programme director and students.

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3.6 Mapping Stakeholder Relationship

Based on the information in the component-based

output structure and component description, the

analyst can reveal the relationship between

components and outputs and between components.

Since all of the stakeholders, three types of

processors, are linked to components, the

component-based output structure naturally shows

the relationship between all of the stakeholders;

identified through components.

4 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSIONS

The majority of stakeholder analysis methods use

processes or activities as the bases for modelling and

analysis. We define stakeholder analysis by

considering the relationship between output and

components. The component-based output structure

and component description provides an alternative

approach for stakeholder analysis. Component-based

stakeholder analysis approach provides a systematic

foundation to stakeholder analysis, due to the

dependent relationship between components and

outputs. Component-based stakeholder analysis

provides a stakeholder relationship map revealing

the interdependency between the unit system and

stakeholders, allowing the organisation to better

manage their stakeholder relationships.

The component-based approach can apply to

both tangible and intangible products. Moreover, the

component-based product structure can be used to

simulate the supply chain of each product. Using the

information stored in each component, an

organisation can keep track of all stakeholders

and/or processes involved in the production and

planning of each specific instance of a product. If a

problem occurs with a component, or sub-

component, then the producer knows instantly which

stakeholders or processes are affected, and

potentially which end product customers will be

affected; supporting future improvements in the

supply chain, and appropriate risk assessment

concerning product recall. Furthermore, component

may be used as a modelling base in enterprise

resource planning system to gain overall control of

products across all departments, as it can provide an

alternative management perspective to conventional

process-based modelling. Practices and information

may also be shared on the basis of component

instead of the basis of functional processes.

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