Question

Role of stakeholders in decision making process of an institutional management

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

Stakeholders must play a central role in setting up priorities and objectives of water and sanitation initiatives in order to ensure relevance and appropriateness. It is important that all stakeholders are involved in the development of projects and not just direct beneficiaries of an initiative.

When planning a strategy on which stakeholders to involve into the decision making process and how to communicate, cooperate and associate with them, it is worthwhile to find out more about the stakeholder characteristics.

This will later on help to attribute roles and responsibilities to different stakeholders so that the implementation is successful and so that no conflicts arise between the stakeholders.

Firstly, the degree of importance of the stakeholders is analysed, i.e., the degree how much somebody is concerned by an initiative.

Importance means the priority given to satisfying stakeholders’ needs and interests from being involved in the design of the project and in the project itself in order for it to be successful. In other words, this is about how important or essential is it that certain stakeholders are involved (WORLD AGROFORESTRY CENTER 2003).

Secondly, influence and power of a stakeholder can affect the success or failure of an initiative. Power refers to the ability of the stakeholder to affect the implementation of a project due to his or her strength or force (WINDBERG 2009). Power can be important in terms of supporting as well as in terms of constraining an initiative. For the success of an initiative, it is very important know whether (and how) a stakeholder can take action, how he/she can be involved, and how much capacity he/she has to contribute. Concerning failures, it is important know the possible (negative) influence a stakeholder has to constrain or even stop an initiative.