The Problem

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noted in Figure 5, the best strategy for these stakeholders is to collaborate with them. His participation at the strategic planning session seemed to be the turning point. Once we were able to get him there and get him actively involved, his perspective on the project changed drastically, increasing his sense of urgency and moving him from a mixedblessing to a supportive stakeholder. Initially, the representative from the tourism corporation was a non-supportive, definitive stakeholder. Having a representative from the tourism industry was critical overall, and in particular this individual was viewed as a necessary participant by many of the other stakeholders (in fact, the participation of the representative from the state transportation agency discussed above was contingent upon the presence of the representative from the tourism corporation). However, gaining his support was another matter. The tourism corporation currently maintains its own travel website, albeit without a substantial amount of the information being considered here. Still, this agency viewed this project, and in particular the private telecommunications corporation as a potential competitor. Therefore, getting support from this stakeholder would be difficult given his rather open reservations about the project itself. However, once we were able to get him to the table, we were able to slowly bring him on board and garner increasing amounts of potential support. Hence, as Blair and Whitehead (1991) argue, an appropriate strategy for dealing with non-supportive stakeholders is a defensive strategy, ideally one would try to move the non-supportive stakeholder into a less hostile position. And while this is not always possible, in this case it clearly played an important role in moving the project forward one more notch. The Problem of Who to Include and Why Returning to one of our initial questions: how do you justify limiting participants, if anyone is potentially a stakeholder?, the answer to this question must be: it depends. As noted above, most of the literature automatically assumes that all participation, at all stages of planning is desirable and necessary. Such oversimplifications are simply 22
unhelpful. As Melissa Powell notes, more often than not, the problem is not whether to include stakeholders, but who gets included and who doesn’t (1997). In the case of the ATIS, the success of the entire project rested upon how the advisory board was set-up and on the outcome of the strategic planning session. Hence, substantial resources were invested simply to begin to understand the dynamics of the existing network, and planning out how and who should be involved. In retrospect, we believe that a stakeholder analysis methodology, such as the one devised above, has greatly enhanced our ability to maneuver more effectively within this network. One cannot underestimate the importance of optimizing one’s resources in situations where time, people and other resources are limited. Ideally, one would like to have processes where every interested party should be allowed effective participation. To be sure, every successful program must involve at some point all relevant voices. The utility of an approach such as the one offered here is that in many cases, different interests can only participate effectively at particular points in the process. Each step of a program will have different goals and different dynamics to consider. VIII. Conclusion The Complexity of Joint Action In their landmark study of implementation, Pressman and Wildavsky (1973) presented a case study of how a project with seemingly unanimous support, was considered a good and valuable project by all, failed miserably. We believe that the approach and methodology presented here provides managers a way of avoiding the pitfalls besieged by the actors in Pressman and Wildavsky’s book. As noted above, the most time consuming phase of a project will increasingly become the initial assessment stages. As public administrators increasingly become facilitators, as opposed to director’s, the need to “feel out” a problems various participants will be critical to effective implementation strategies. That is, through a better understanding of the network involved in any given policy area using some derivation of the stakeholder management approach offered 23
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Page 5 and 6: public administrator, however, are
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Page 34 and 35: Goldenberg, Sheldon. 1992. Thinking
Page 36: Timney, M.M. (1996). “Overcoming

The Problem

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