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Multi-Stakeholder Participation for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals: A Systems Thinking Approach
... The second contribution by Elias (2022) provides insights into disagreements that the multi-stakeholder mechanism is confronted with in actualising Agenda 2030. ...
... Based on a New Zealand transport infrastructure project, Elias (2022) shows how effective multi-stakeholder participation can enable a broader partnership and reach consensus to accomplish set targets with minimal delays when utilised. Using the Transmission Gully motorway, transport infrastructure project in Wellington, New Zealand, the study illustrates how multi-stakeholder participation using group model-building exercise can be used to generate a shared mental model of multiple stakeholders in conflict. ...
... Taken together, the topical areas of contributions featured in this issue can be easily grouped into (1) business actions and efforts towards Agenda 2030 (Ahmed et al., 2022;Okwuosa, 2022;Oyewo et al., 2022), (2) governmental actions and the implication of multi-stakeholder groups actions in accomplishing Agenda 2030 (Elias, 2022;Moses et al., 2022) and (3) academic contributions towards corporate environmental research in Africa. These featured chapters and the broad themes that they focused on collectively answers to the call for contributions to the special issue and thus provide a basis for academic and policy engagement on SDGs moving forward. ...
Environmental sustainability is one of humanity's most daunting issues and continues to garner attention from researchers and policymakers. The substantial corpus of work on sustainability has focused on broader sustainable development goals (SDGs), with occasional discourse on the progress of environmental issues within the SDGs. In this issue, we draw precise attention to environmental SDGs and their implementation progress at country and company level, underscoring the actions required to accomplish Agenda 2030. The contributions to this special issue provide incremental knowledge of the state of progress made towards accomplishing Agenda 2030, as well as advance our understanding of corporate environmental research particularly in developing countries. We report a concise viewpoint of the chapters featured in this special issue of Advances in Environmental Accounting and Management on the progress and prospects of environmental sustainability and Agenda 2030. Our review and summary highlights crucial findings from each contribution, the implications of such findings for policymakers, and areas for immediate and future actions pertinent for the accomplishment of the Agenda. The overarching outcome from the chapters featured in the special issue suggests a positive change in the appetite for sustainable practices at both country and company level. Yet, the practicality and approach to attain the goals set by United Nations Agenda 2030 is still a distance away. We believe insights from chapters in this issue would provide pragmatic support to managers and governments in developing and implementing strategic actions to confront the growing yet emerging state of environmental SDGs accomplishment at country and company levels.
Transportation infrastructure is a pillar of economic development as well as the main contributor to climate change. Therefore, it is necessary to transform the transport sector investment into climate-resilient, low-carbon transportation choices in order to achieve sustainable transportation infrastructure. In the case of China, this transformation might be necessary from the perspective of the “New-style Urbanization” strategy, and for fulfilling this strategy, policy realignment is required. To address this policy-level void in the literature, we explore the influence of public-private partnerships investment in the transport sector, renewable energy consumption, urbanization on transport-induced carbon emissions in China. For this purpose, we apply the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (QARDL) method during 1990Q1-2018Q4. Based on the results of the study, a multipronged sustainable development goal (SDG) framework has been suggested, under which SDG 11, SDG 13, and SDG 8 are addressed while using SDG 17 as a vehicle.
Sustainable Development Goal 7 and the Paris Agreement reiterate the importance of a worldwide uptake of renewable energy. However, the present growth rate of renewables in the global energy mix is too slow to meet international targets. There exists at present a wide range of institutions with different characteristics that work internationally to promote a steeper increase. Whereas previous studies have examined the institutional landscape for renewable energy and the considerable interactions occurring across institutions, it remains unclear what the implications of these institutional interactions are for effectiveness. This paper assesses how institutional interactions can strengthen effectiveness, by focusing on three multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy. Based on an expert survey and semi-structured interviews, the study provides both theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding institutional interactions in relation to effectiveness. Moreover, it provides insights on how to strengthen the effectiveness of multi-stakeholder partnerships for renewable energy. Results show that different levels and types of institutional interactions may influence effectiveness differently, with the sharing of procedural information and coordination mechanisms being considered most fruitful to increase effectiveness. Importantly, however, such interactions should not harm the autonomy, nor the efficiency of multi-stakeholder partnerships.
As firms make the necessary transition to more sustainable business practices, human resource management scholarship and practice finds itself at an inflection point. To what degree does our discipline engage in sustainability, and expand to a multi-stakeholder triple bottom line (TBL) orientation? In this overview article to the special issue, we bring together papers which embrace the challenge of creating a new, more sustainable human resource management model with a multi-stakeholder triple bottom line orientation, which emphasizes environmental and social performance in addition to economic outcomes. In this paper, we coalesce the contributions of the manuscripts into an integrative framework for sustainable HRM, and identify six areas in which future research efforts should be directed to substantively advance this important work.
Background:
In 2018, the Australian Government, through a Senate-led Parliamentary Inquiry, sought the views of diverse stakeholders on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation both domestically and as part of Australia's Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) program. One hundred and sixty-four written submissions were received. The submissions offered perspective and guidance from a rich cross-section of those involved, and with keen interest in, Australia's ODA-SDG commitment. This article identifies and explores the submissions to that Inquiry which placed impetus on Australia's ODA-SDG and health and development nexus. It then compares how the synthesized views, concerns and priorities of selected Inquiry stakeholders align with and reflect the Australian Government's treatment of SDG 3 in its SDG Voluntary National Review (VNR), as well as with the final Inquiry report summarizing submission content.
Results:
Four key themes were synthesized and drawn from the thirty-one stakeholder submissions included in our analysis. Disconnect was then found to exist between the selected stakeholder views and the Australian Government's SDG-VNR's treatment of SDG 3, as well as with the content of the Parliamentary Inquiry's final report with respect to the ODA-SDG and health and development nexus.
Conclusions:
We situate the findings of our analysis within the wider strategic context of the Australian Government's policy commitment to "step up" in the Pacific region. This research provides an insight into both multi-stakeholder and Federal Government views on ODA in the Indo-Pacific region, especially at a time when Australia's Pacific engagement has come to the forefront of both foreign and security policy. We conclude that the SDG agenda, including the SDG health and development agenda, could offer a unique vehicle for enabling a paradigm shift in the Australian Government's development approach toward the Pacific region and its diverse peoples. This potential is strongly reflected in stakeholder perspectives included in our analysis. However, study findings remind that the political determinants of health, and overlapping political determinants of SDG achievement, will be instrumental in the coming decade, and that stakeholders from different sectors need to be genuinely engaged in SDG-ODA policy-related decision-making and planning by governments in both developed and developing countries alike.
The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were developed to ‘transform our world’. Yet critics argue that the concept of sustainable development serves to maintain an unsustainable status quo, or provide a positive gloss on a terminal conflict between its ‘pillars’: environmental protection, economic growth and social welfare. In this article, we examine this tension with respect to the implementation of SDG 12 in the European Union. SDG 12 calls for responsible consumption and production, which necessitates reconciling, or ‘decoupling’, economic growth and environmental degradation: the core of sustainable development. Initial examination reveals that the largest implementation gap is among high-consuming countries, including those of the EU, the focus of our article, who are failing to account for transboundary impacts of products consumed domestically. This shortcoming, facilitated by the flexibility of the SDG ‘global target, national action’ approach, undermines the achievement of other environmental SDGs relating to biodiversity and climate, among others. Yet, as compared to other EU approaches to addressing transboundary environmental harm from trade in existing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), which we examine, the global focus and breadth of SDG 12 offers transformative potential. Ultimately, even if the three pillars of sustainable development are not ‘rebalanced’ toward environmental conservation, they can provide a construct for examining interactions and trade-offs between goals. Simply taking account of transboundary consumption, as SDG 12 indicators call for, would encourage more effective cooperation to help producing countries address environmental problems that result from production for export through impact assessment and enforcement.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is ambitious and inclusive, but how well are these global aspirations likely to result in implementable policy change for water and sanitation? This article assesses governance challenges at the local level associated with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which pledges to ensure sustainable water and sanitation for all. The majority of developing countries manage services at the subnational level, making the quality of local governance the key ingredient for improvements in the sector. This article first reviews prior shortcomings in global monitoring efforts and how SDG 6 was formulated to address them. The analysis then examines local governance challenges facing SDG 6 and potential barriers to implementation. These barriers manifest as both contradictions within SDG 6 itself as well as contradictions between SDG 6 and the Sustainable Development Agenda more broadly. As SDG monitoring rubrics undergo further reformulations, it may be necessary to prioritize between goals and targets, or otherwise stagger the timing of their promotion and implementation.
Coastal nations and islands have featured a participatory turn this century directed to resolving conflicts in multi-use/user marine spaces. Yet, few conceptual and empirical studies focus on participation as an institutional form to engage with the pressures of diverse and contesting uses and user interests in marine environments. These spaces are volatile arenas of power and politics, challenging available regulatory, governance and managerial models. The paper first reviews understandings of the nature of the relational
field of diversity-contestation-participation in the international literature and second draws on empirical findings from five case studies of marine participatory process configurations in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand. The nation is a unique ecological, political, social, cultural and economic setting. Maori (the
indigenous people) have developed holistic intergenerational resource nurturing principles and practices (Vision Matauranga (VM)) that are actively shaping marine futures. This momentum has markedly altered
the nature and terms of engagement of participation in Aotearoa New Zealand's shallow marine regulatory context. The country is thus an ideal setting to examine the rise of quasi-independent Participatory initiatives, contextualise and examine their diversity, contestation, participation interactions, confront relational and co-production aspects of agency that are an integral part of real-time participatory processes, and to reflect on van Kerkhoff and Lebel's (2015) contention that different possible futures hang on people asking
new questions and being brave enough to experiment with process, collaboration, and their own conceptualisations and knowledges'.
This paper examines the processes of formulation of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12) – ‘Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns’ – and its targets and indicators. We argue that business interests have steered its narrative of sustainable growth. The outcome of the SDG 12 negotiations reflects a production‐ and design‐centered perspective that emerged in the 1990s and has a business‐friendly regulatory approach and faith in solutions through new technologies. We show how the targets and indicators emerged in debates between national governments, UN agencies, civil society and private sector organizations – and how they reflect both the political process and technical and practical considerations in translation of a broad concept into the SDG format. While the emergence of SDG 12 as a standalone goal stems from a push by developing countries to build pressure on developed countries, and its presence may open space for attention to this area in the future, many of its targets were watered down and left vague. The indicators to measure progress on the targets further narrow the scope and ambition of Goal 12, whose current content does not adequately reflect earlier more transformative conceptualizations of Sustainable Consumption and Production. Most of the targets under SDG 12 do not yet have satisfactory indicators. Enunciation of the targets may yet spur further work and real actions.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) stress the necessity of private businesses’ active participation, appealing for their creativity and innovation to create value for the common good, such as reducing poverty, eradicating hunger, and protecting biodiversity. While currently some, especially recently formed private businesses may consider the common good as their main business goal, most existing stock-listed businesses clearly do not. The question that arises is why private stock-listed businesses should voluntarily engage with such common good objectives while being principally shareholder value oriented.
This study aims to map the undiscovered terrain of corporate SDG involvement as emanating from the sustainability reports of the 2000 largest stock listed businesses worldwide.
The methodology is based on an exploratory two-step approach. First, using logistic and quantile regressions, potential associations between reported SDG involvement and corporation attributes are investigated quantitatively for a sample of the 2000 largest stock listed corporations worldwide. Secondly, the most extensive SDG reporters are analyzed qualitatively in order to explore what is actually disclosed.
The quantitative results show that corporate involvement in the SDGs is overall still limited, and mainly associated with commitment to other sustainability-related and Far Eastern country settings, as well as company size, and corporate sustainability level. Such implies that SDG involvement is inspired by a mixture of legitimacy and institutional motives. However, when the level of involvement is analyzed, a much more scattered picture occurs. Global Compact membership is the only factor that is consistently highly significant. More importantly, qualitative scrutiny of the individual reports reveals that company involvement is largely symbolic and intentional, rather than substantive. This suggests that companies treat the SDGs, similar to the Global Compact, as a scheme with non-committal implications, facilitating impression management or learning.
This study provides an initial understanding of current corporate practice, as well as clues for theorizing this largely unexplored research field. Practically, the overall lack of meaningful SDG disclosures implies that stakeholders with an SDG interest cannot rely on sustainability reports for their decisions.
Implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) adopted at the UN Summit in September 2015 specifically invites the creation of “an integrated, holistic, multi-stakeholder approach”. This implies the need for systems thinking in practice, a tradition that draws on systems theories, tools and techniques able to facilitate better conversation and cooperation between agencies. As an approach it goes beyond development of competencies through formal education programmes. This paper focuses on SDG 17—the means of implementation—and the role of systems thinking in practice for supporting both competence and SDG implementation capability. Two inter-linked initiatives led by systems thinking practitioners in the field of sustainability science are reported; one is an action research inquiry exploring the praxis (theory-informed-action) challenges of applying systems thinking in practice in contemporary workplaces ranging from in-field development projects to government administrations and business ventures, and another which built on the findings from this inquiry—a proposal for developing an action-learning platform for SDG implementation. Experience suggests that implementing SDGs requires not only competence in systems thinking but a capability of putting systems thinking into practice in a dynamic way, as praxis. The proposed action-learning platform can also be regarded as a learning laboratory in the sense that it will offer learning support and a chance to collaborate and experiment. This platform aims to be co-designed with multi-agency practitioners from international development, government planning, business/social enterprise and NGOs. The proposed platform draws on open-source resources, and ideas of social learning, developmental evaluation and systems thinking in practice traditions.
This article argues that the complex multi-stakeholder arrangements anticipated for implementing Sustainable Development Goals call for a distinct type of host: an interlocutor. This central idea arises from new comparative research on multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) undertaken in four countries: Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. This work adds a detailed dimension to meta-studies on conditions for success and practical guides for establishing and running MSIs. It begins to fill a significant gap in knowledge by analysing the attributes and competencies required for effectively orchestrating MSIs as well as illuminating their relative significance over time. The context is an anticipated expansion in demand for finely tuned and skilled hosting of Sustainable Development Goals-inspired MSIs. This task will probably be more complicated than MSIs associated with climate change and Millennium Development Goals, both of which saw business on the side lines with uneven attention paid to the principle of local ownership. Recognising and investing in interlocution as a pivotal role can increase the performance of internationally inspired MSIs which, to date, have a mixed but generally poor record of effectiveness.
This independent research paper was prepared for the 2016 ECOSOC Partnership Forum, commissioned by the UNDESA Office for ECOSOC Support and Coordination. A draft version was discussed during an Expert Group Meeting in February 2016.
The recent General Assembly resolution under the agenda item entitled “Towards global partnerships” requests the ECOSOC “to hold during its partnership forum to be held in 2016 a discussion on the best practices and ways to improve, inter alia, transparency, accountability and the sharing of experiences of multi-stakeholder partnerships and on the review and monitoring of those partnerships, including the role of Member States in review and monitoring.” (A/RES/70/224, para. 15) Consequently, the main purpose of this paper is to inform and stimulate this debate.
The structure of the paper is as follows: First, the paper defines and differentiates types of multi-stakeholder partnerships and then identifies research results regarding their successes and/or failures (part 1). Next, it briefly recaps the history of the UN’s involvement in those partnerships and points out recent developments in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (part 2). The third part outlines a variety of options for improving the overall governance and specifically the accountability, transparency, and measurement of results of multi-stakeholder partnerships at the UN. Each section in this part starts with a review of the status-quo and an evaluation of recent research results and then outlines (alternative) options for further improvement. The last part attempts to stimulate the debate
on how an integrated architecture and coherent process could look like.
Stakeholder management is an important and common practice in any project, as it allows managers to better manage process, performance and risk. In virtual projects, collaboration and engagement with stakeholders is relatively more complex, challenging, and critical for project success. This paper proposes a novel stakeholder engagement process, focused on proactive stakeholder management in virtual projects. The proposed process is described and illustrated on a public sector project case in New Zealand. Using this process, the stakeholders of this project were able to discuss differing views on the project initiative and collaboratively reach mutually agreeable project objectives. The process can be applied by managers to better engage key stakeholders to ensure their intent is effectively communicated at the interpersonal and group levels.
OR's traditional problem-solving techniques offer remarkably little assistance in deciding what the problem is. New problem structuring methods (PSMs) provide decision makers with systematic help in identifying an agreed framework for their problem. The result is either a well-defined project that can be addressed using traditional OR methods, or a clarification of the situation that enables those responsible to agree on a course of action. In principle, PSMs can provide analysts with greater access to strategic problems - those engaging multiple relatively independent decision makers. PSMs' transparent methods of representation can capture differing perceptions of the situation, to help generate a consensus or to facilitate negotiations.
Stakeholder theory has been a popular heuristic for describing the management environment for years, but it has not attained full theoretical status. Our aim in this article is to contribute to a theory of stakeholder identification and salience based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. By combining these attributes, we generate a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their salience to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.
To be able to exploit the future opportunities for Operational Research (OR), we need to prepare for them now. To conceptualize alternative futures for OR, we need to understand the potentialities of the present. To understand the present, we need to have a grasp of the past history that gave us the OR that we have, rather than some other analytic practice. OR was thrown up by a situation where traditional management methods were proving inadequate to handle the growing complexity of organizational arrangements. Problem structuring methods (PSMs) in turn were generated out of a sense that the trajectory of OR had led it away from important areas of social decision-making. PSMs have made great strides but are still encountering barriers to acceptance. This paper will explore the factors that presently constrain PSMs, and what developments could take them into new fields.
This paper provides a review and evaluation of the use of problem structuring methods (PSMs) in practice. It starts by describing the origins of PSMs, the type of problem situation for which they are suitable, and the characteristics of some leading methods. An overview of the practice of PSMs is provided from a number of angles, including case studies and surveys of applications. A number of issues in the application of PSMs are discussed, in particular an account of the debate about evaluation of the success of PSMs; the selection of an appropriate method; multimethodology; and a variety of aspects of the maintenance of relationships with the client organisation(s). Finally, some possible future developments are suggested, especially through productive interactions with similar or related practices.
One of society’s greatest challenges, reflected in United Nations Sustainable Development, is the issue of food waste. To address this, the hospitality industry must develop and implement multifaceted solutions from a range of stakeholders in the food supply chain. The paper describes a multi-stakeholder partnership set up to help the Dutch hospitality industry reduce food waste by means of a “Food Waste Challenge”. It reports findings from the challenge’s first edition, a large-scale field experiment with 172 participating restaurants, showing that after implementing a range of behavioural interventions, food waste decreased by 21% on average at participating restaurants with complete measurements. This research builds on scarce literature on multi-stakeholder partnerships and “green” behavioural interventions in tourism in order to battle societal problems such as food waste and thereby contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 12 and 17 and build a more sustainable hospitality industry.
Purpose
This research extends understanding of the role brand co-creation plays in encouraging ethical consumption. The paper addresses sustainable development goal 12 (SDG 12): ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, exploring how brand co-creation can be employed to advance this development goal.
Design/methodology/approach
The Customer Brand Co-creation Model is used within an embedded case design to understand the role of the brand and the consumer in promoting sustainable consumption within the fashion industry.
Findings
Initial insights suggest marketing has much to offer sustainability through the use of the brand. An extended brand co-creation framework highlights the importance of embedding sustainability and viewing the consumer as central to mobilising SDG12.
Practical implications
An important concern is to ensure sustainability is embedded within the activities and strategy of the organisation and viewed as integral rather than peripheral.
Originality/value
The paper examines aspects crucial to co-creation of “sustainability” through a focus on both the consumer and the brand. Case narratives provide a strong foundation to consider the Customer Brand Co-creation Model and implications of this framework for managerial practice. This study extends the model to encompass the umbrella of “sustainability” and the firm's perspective.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the concept of multi-stakeholder partnerships in relation to the United Nations' sustainable development goals and propose a renewed multi-stakeholder partnerships framework that enables the implementation of the sustainable development goals.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs an integrative review methodology to assess, critique and synthesize the extant literature on the multi-stakeholder partnerships and sustainable development goals.
Findings
We propose a conceptual framework of multi-stakeholder partnerships to support the sustainable development goals implementation. Thus, this paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of the multi-stakeholder partnerships mechanism that enhances the sustainable development goals implementation.
Research limitations/implications
We propose a conceptual framework of multi-stakeholder partnerships to support the sustainable development goals implementation. Thus, this paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of the multi-stakeholder partnerships mechanism that enhances the sustainable development goals implementation.
Originality/value
We contend that this is one of the few early papers that contributes to the conceptual development of a collaborative multi-stakeholder partnerships paradigm by which such partnerships are formed and institutionalized among multiple interacting sectors to achieve the sustainable development goals.
Social and Environmental Accountability Journal (SEAJ) made notable progress as a specialist journal for disseminating social and environmental accounting research (SEAR) over the past 26 years. This study reviews SEAJ’s published papers to establish the journal’s achievements and to suggest possible areas to address heading into the future. We analyse the volume, methodology, impact (citation) of articles and jurisdictions represented in SEAJ. The findings show that original articles employing qualitative methods have the most representation in SEAJ. While there is a reasonable spread of published research focusing on the UK, the US and Australia, the results indicate a paucity of research emanating from developing countries. The projections herein are in line with the intent of SEAJ to advance the journal’s goals by 2020 and beyond. Consequently, we call on SEAJ contributors to consider research that accounts for the underrepresented jurisdictions and the extant SEAR gaps, as well as the emerging issues affecting social and environmental accounting (SEA).
Stakeholders influence the successful implementation of strategies in a system. This study aims at developing strategic interventions through the involvement of stakeholders who are affected by these strategies. Using a systems thinking approach, this study illustrates the creation of a participative system model that led to the development of three strategic interventions by the stakeholders. Group model building exercises based on system dynamics were used as a participative means for developing these strategic interventions in a transport infrastructure project in the Wellington region of New Zealand. This study found that strategic interventions developed through stakeholder involvement can address problematic situations holistically and give due regard to competing interests.
This paper analyses the commonalities and variances of environmental approval procedures in four OECD territories, Japan, New Zealand (NZ), the European Union (EU), and the United States (US). In order to streamline regulatory approval frameworks for large-scale renewable energy (LS-RE) installations, outlining the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of the current systems in place, is crucial in determining what components to alter in line with national and regional particularities. The jurisdictional juxtaposition facilitates the identification of administrative burdens, which could increase environmental review-related costs for developers and prolong the entire approval process. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) frameworks, a major component of the LS-RE approval process, suffer from administrative fracturing between the local, regional, and national levels as well as between various government agencies. In combination with strong reservations from local civil society stakeholders, the results revealed some of the flaws of the current LS-RE project approval systems in place. The EIA frameworks and reform efforts in all four jurisdictions illustrate the importance of consolidated and comprehensive frameworks to reduce the amount of planning uncertainties for developers. Utilising regulatory tools such as mandatory timeframes, scoping, clear screening thresholds and priority assessment categories for LS-RE projects, could result in robust EIA processes based on unified regulatory procedures for climate change mitigating energy projects, inside as well as outside of OECD jurisdictions.
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on partnerships between stakeholders from government, the private sector, civil society, academic and research institutions, and international agencies. The United Nations (UN) system provides governance and support from an international perspective; national government creates an enabling and monitoring environment for implementation; civil society creates advocacy and awareness; the academic and research community provides knowledge, technologies and innovation for implementation; and the private sector does much of the implementation towards achieving the SDG targets. These different roles and responsibilities imply that development objectives cannot be achieved in isolation. There is a need for integration and partnerships between the different role players. While partnerships do already exist, there is a call for interventions to strengthen them. Multi-stakeholder platforms are proposed as a mechanism to support and encourage partnerships, and to provide leadership on successful partnerships for achieving the SDGs. Any partnership established needs to be accountable, as well as people- and planet-centred.
The purpose of this chapter is to outline the development of the idea of "stakeholder management" as it has come to be applied in strategic management. We begin by developing a brief history of the concept. We then suggest that traditionally the stakeholder approach to strategic management has several related characteristics that serve as distinguishing features. We review recent work on stakeholder theory and suggest how stakeholder management has affected the practice of management. We end by suggesting further research questions.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to analyse the complexities involved in implementing continuous improvement initiatives in public sector organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on a case study of a private sector organisation based in New Zealand and its efforts in implementing continuous improvement activities in its public-sector clients. Twelve semi structured interviews were followed by group model building exercises based on system dynamics that led to the development of a systems model.
Findings
Continuous improvement initiatives using public private partnerships were successful in steadily improving the operational excellence and end-user satisfaction in this case. But client satisfaction was only increasing at a much slower rate. The underlying structure responsible for this behaviour was captured using a causal loop model and explained using seven interacting feedback loops.
Research limitations/implications
The major limitation of this research is that it is confined to one private sector organisation and its public sector clients. Thus, the generalisability cannot be utilised for future reference.
Practical implications
This article illustrates the development of strategic initiatives based on a participative model building approach. It provides a practical method for initiating long term structural changes while managing continuous improvement activities in public sector organisations.
Originality/value
This article contributes a New Zealand case of public-private partnerships for implementing continuous improvement initiatives. It illustrates a systems approach to analyse the complexities involved in implementing continuous improvement initiatives in public sector organisations.
As social and ecological problems escalate, involving stakeholder groups in helping solve these issues becomes critical for reaching solutions. The UN Sustainable Development Goal #17 recognizes the importance of partnerships and collaborative governance. However, organizing large multi-stakeholder groups (or partnerships) requires sophisticated implementation structures for ensuring collaborative action. Understanding the relationship between implementation structures and the outcomes is central to designing successful partnerships for sustainability. In the context of sustainable community plan implementation, the larger research project of which the results presented in this book chapter are one part of, examines how stakeholders configure to achieve results. To date, we have the data from a survey completed by 111 local governments around the world. The survey was offered in English, French, Spanish, and Korean. Seventeen integrated environmental, social, and economic topics are considered, including climate change, waste, ecological diversity, and local economy. Despite the prevalence of sustainable community plan implementation in local authorities around the world, there is scant empirical data on the topics covered in these plans internationally, the partners involved in implementation, and the costs and savings to the local governments that implement in partnership with their communities. The results presented in this book chapter show that sustainable community plans continue to be created and implemented in a diversity of communities around the world, are integrated in the sustainability topics that they cover, involve local organizations as partners in implementation, act as motivators of resource investment by the local government in community sustainability, and result in savings for the local government.
This article presents the application of the systems thinking and modelling methodology for analyzing multiple stakeholders with conflicting stakes. It illustrates this methodological framework using a New Zealand transport infrastructure case. By moving beyond the usual stakeholder analysis tools, comprising of matrices or lists of criteria or attributes, this study tries to plug the gap in the stakeholder literature pertaining to the need for a stakeholder analysis approach that can capture complex and dynamic issues in stakeholder management. The results of the experiments conducted, using a systems model developed in this study, highlight the need for holistic approaches instead of simple solutions, while dealing with complex problems involving multiple stakeholders.
Infrastructure megaprojects are historically associated with poor delivery, both in terms of cost and schedule performance. Large Transport Infrastructure Projects (TIPs) are amongst the most controversial and are often delivered late, over budget, and providing less benefit than expected. While there is a growing theoretical body of literature addressing TIPs, empirical research is still required to determine which TIPs characteristics affect TIPs schedule & cost performance. This paper addresses this issue, applying an empirically-based methodology to a dataset of 30 European TIPs. The results highlight the importance of financial support from the government and the strong influence of both external and internal stakeholders, mainly in relation to their early engagement and to their nationality. Technological characteristics and the presence of Special Purpose Entities are also correlated with the TIPs performance. These key findings both support and contradict the literature, and are relevant for both policy makers and project managers during the decision-making process, planning and delivery of TIPs.
A growing number of companies are convening stakeholder networks to address complex sustainability and corporate responsibility issues. The role of network convenor is new for most companies, and it involves different ways of thinking, being and engaging beyond the more traditional approaches to managing bilateral stakeholder relationships. In this paper we describe how three companies established successful networks and then explore the mind-set, skill sets and engagement processes that are required to build and sustain multi-stakeholder networks. The paper draws on theory and research related to complex adaptive systems, collective learning and whole-system change.
Stakeholder theory development has increased in recent years, in part because of its emphasis on explaining and predicting how an organization functions with respect to the relationships and influences existing in its environment. Thus far, most researchers have concentrated on dyadic relationships between individual stakeholders and a focal organization. Using social network analysis, I construct in this article a theory of stakeholder influences, which accommodates multiple, interdependent stakeholder demands and predicts how organizations respond to the simultaneous influence of multiple stakeholders.
Client involvement in modeling is expected to change mental models and thereby foster implementation of conclusions. Leading authors have pointed out that a lack of knowledge on the crucial elements of modeling interventions hinders accumulation of research results. There is no clear evidence for the effectiveness of group model building, and a conceptual model linking elements of the modeling process to goals is missing. We propose an integrative conceptual model, drawing on theories of persuasion (mental model change) and the influence of beliefs, attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on actions. Our study builds on standard operationalizations and a body of research in social psychology. Data from seven group model-building cases indicate that group model building changes attitudes, subjective norms and intentions. Conclusions for group model-building practice are that participants often do not recognize mental model changes and that strengthening of participants' feeling of control needs special attention. Copyright © 2010 System Dynamics Society.
This article describes an approach to bridging the gap between the generalist thinking of decision makers and the specialism of modellers by concentrating on the preliminary issue conceptualisation stage of modelling. A new type of visual facilitation is described using hexagons as a flexible mapping technique to bridge the gap between thoughts and models. A typical team application is described and a link is also made to creative thinking techniques, including the use of cognitive colour-coding. These techniques are supported by new use of magnetic hardware and a specially designed mapping software. In conclusion, the idea of the transitional discipline is introduced as a way in which a variety of specialist decision support methods can be made more user friendly.
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