Stakeholder mapping techniques

When it comes to large scale problems, like floodings, often there are many different stakeholders involved. Apart from it being a complicated technical problem, it involves humans. Different types of stakeholders are related to the situation. With all these stakeholders having different responsibilities, power, values and interest, this can become messy.

However, there are ways which can help you simplify and demarcate such a entangled stakeholder situation. There are multiple methods, but the one we will be using comes from Klijn & Koppenjan (2016). Unfortunately, this book is not openly accessible, so we will introduce the method here. It starts with demarcating the decision making process. By demarcation, you identify important events relating to the problem situation. Next, you identify a specific issue. In the issue identification you try to make clear what exactly is the root of the problem on which you efforts need to be focussed. In the following step, the identification of key actors, you start asking yourself who are actually involved? The answer to that question identifies the key actors/stakeholders. Once knowing the actors you investigate their values, interests problem perceptions and their problem perception by means of a stakeholder analysis and a materiality diagram or power-interest matrix. In this course we will be focussing more on the latter, because it is more intuitive. After the analysis, you draw conclusions and from that recommendations can be derived. Important is to note that these steps are not separate entities, but they follow from each other and are therefore interrelated.

Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. (2016). Analyzing governance networks. In Network governance in the public sector (1st ed.). Routledge.

Power-interest matrix