Week 6 Stakeholders & Risk - Sheets & Articles

Question 1

What is a stakeholder?

Answer 1

A person, group, or organization that can place a claim on the organization’s attention, resources, or output, or is affected by that output.

Question 2

What are the three organizational structures?

Answer 2

• Functional organization (traditional, functions)
• Project organization (projects as dominant form of business; MP office responsible for assigning project manager)
• Matrix organization (combination of the two. Each team member will have more than one boss)

Question 3

What does interdependence mean?

Answer 3

Stakeholders need each other; but they also fight over goals.

Question 4

How could one make a policy analysis (read: consult) authoritative and contributing to collective decision making?

Answer 4

You need a process of interaction between the analyst and the parties concerned.
This process is more important than the result, because every stakeholder should have a say in the process. They can’t come back later if they had a say.

Question 5

What was De Bruijn & ten Heuvelhof’s conclusion (2002)?

Answer 5

Offer stakeholders room in the process, but make sure that the process is of such a high quality that stakeholders feel less and less need to use this room as the process proceeds.

Question 6

What is mutual dependence?

Answer 6

Invest, but gain something too (reciprocity)

Question 7

What does ‘no value leak’ mean?

Answer 7

Sum total of all value being exchanged >= 0.

Question 8

Name 3 problems for developing a sustainable business model.

Answer 8

1. Revenues not for those who need to make investments
2. Revenues not when investments are needed
3. There are good reasons (barriers) not to change

Question 9

A sustainable business model ensures:

Answer 9

1. Fair distribution of revenue over parties
2. Fair redistribution of revenues over time
3. There are good reasons to resolve barriers to change

Question 10

Name some of the main activities to produce fundamental decisions and actions (Bryson, 2004).

Answer 10

• Organize participation
• Create strategic ideas for interventions
• Build a winning coalition around proposal development, review, and adoption (!)
• Implement, monitor, and evaluate strategic interventions.

Question 11

How can you move a powerful stakeholder from ‘opposed’ to ‘supportive’?

Answer 11

By altering their interests: settling an issue in their advantage.

Question 12

What are the 3 views on conflict?

Answer 12

• Traditional: conflict is negative
• Contemporary: conflict is natural and inevitable
• Interactionist: some conflict is necessary for performance

Question 13

Name some examples of strategies for handling conflict.

Answer 13

Force, smoothing (accomodating), compromise, confrontation (problem solving), withdrawal & collaboration.

Question 14

Name 3 reasons for user resistance, according to Markus (1983).

Answer 14

• Internal factors (“all users resist change”)
• Poor system design
• Misfit between organizational context and system design features