The Stakeholder Engagement Manual Volume 2 - AccountAbility

High impact
stakeholder groups
are those with the
power to:
High dependency
stakeholders are
those who are in a
position of:
The willingness and
ability of stakeholders
to engage can be
classifi ed in various
ways as appropriate:
STAGE 1
Discuss the objectives of your organisation in relation to the issues within each of
the four categories of maturity, the risks and opportunities involved and the types
of stakeholders that are relevant for this. Consider how to approach issues in each
category and whether further prioritisation criteria are needed.
Use the issue maturity analysis to assign levels of priority or broad approaches to
engagement to each of the issues.
Prioritising stakeholders
Decide on prioritisation criteria for stakeholders. Infl uence, dependency and
willingness to engage are good general starting points but you may also need to
consider other more specifi c criteria.
Discuss and analyse how each stakeholder group rates against these criteria.
– Remove, grant or infl uence ‘license to operate’
– Restrict access to resources, operating sites or intellectual capital
– Damage or build company reputation
– Contribute or detract from companies ability to learn and innovate
– Restrict or provide access to investment funds
– Provide useful early warning signals about emerging issues and risks or cause
distractions diverting management attention and time from core activities
depending on the context of engagement may want to focus on some or all of
these sources of infl uence.
– Direct fi nancial dependence (e.g. who depend on you for wages, purchases, grants)
– Indirect fi nancial dependence (e.g. whose livelihoods depend on you through your
contributions to the regional economy, or for example low income customers who depend
on low prices for basic goods which you may provide)
– Non-fi nancial dependence (e.g. those who depend on you for essential services)
– Non-fi nancial impairment or risk from your operations (e.g. through air or noise pollution
or from risk to health for consumers of your products)
– Low/no choice (e.g. employees facing compulsory redundancy, neighbours to a
production plant, addicts in the case of addictive products, consumers vulnerable due
to illiteracy, etc)
– Adversarial/ hostile
– Unknown
– Uninterested
– Engaged through formal mechanism (e.g. via governance, regulation, negotiation)
– Cooperative
– Competitive
Plot stakeholders on the following grid using infl uence and dependency as the axes.
THE PRACTITIONER'S HANDBOOK ON STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT | 45