A missed opportunity: understanding community stakeholders' perspectives

Abstract

Resource companies are moving increasingly toward transformational engagement with their community stakeholders, where they have joint learning and sense-making of the issues. A key antecedent to successful engagement at this level is ensuring that the company has an understanding of the perspectives of the community stakeholders and the meaning behind statements made by them. In this paper, we present a three-step meanings-based analysis technique that can help companies better understand their community stakeholders' perspective in the initial stage of the engagement process. We describe each step and demonstrate the application to public submissions about the Nevis River in New Zealand, and explain how they differ from conventional issue or stakeholder analysis. The first step is to generate text sufficiently rich that it can be analysed for meaning. The other two steps of the analysis are to generate a set of statements used by stakeholders to describe their sense of the issue and then to identify the positions that stakeholders adopt in relation to the issue. Applying the technique can enhance understanding of community stakeholders' perspectives and move a resource company toward transformational engagement.

MAPTkit: An environmental management decision‐tool for inclusive, equitable and representative stakeholder attribute mapping

“…Methods of data collection and analysis that refer to information from case study material included in Framework articles are included in the previous results sections. In the case where no attributes were analysed ( n = 1), the method focused on the perspectives of the stakeholders relative to the issues present within a given situation (Walton & Rivers, 2011).…”

“…Additionally, some frameworks included an initial stage of identifying the environmental problem or issue due to be addressed ( n = 5). The most distinct framework, only following two of the six processes listed above, (Walton & Rivers, 2011) generated stakeholder information through analysis of interview transcripts and written materials. Framework presentation was commonly through a list of steps or stages ( n = 10), with prominent methods of flow diagrams ( n = 3) and pictorial representations ( n = 4).…”

“…Four frameworks provide a generalist approach (Leventon et al, 2016; Luyet et al, 2012; Reed et al, 2009; Sharpe et al, 2021). Some Frameworks provided distinct methods such as discourse analysis of transcripts and other written materials (Walton & Rivers, 2011) or a framework designed for transdisciplinary researchers with experience in science (Leventon et al, 2016).…”

“…Encouraging the diversification of stakeholder analysis methods across a wider variety of science disciplines highlights the push towards more interdisciplinary research within the environmental sector (Leventon et al, 2016). Some options for diversification could include widening the scope of methods used in data collection, such as including the use of matrix mapping (Sharpe et al, 2021) and discourse analysis of written material (Walton & Rivers, 2011). Increased use of computational methods to manage databases can also support the development and use of decision support systems and online tools (Shim et al, 2002).…”