Examining Stakeholder Perspectives: Process, Performance and Progress of the Age-Friendly Taiwan Program

Abstract

Since Taiwan’s age-friendly city (AFC) program was launched in 2012, the central government has provided various resources to the country’s 22 local authorities, including budgetary support, policy advocacy, and consultation from a team of experts. This study examines stakeholder perspectives on the process, performance, and outcome of the AFC program. A 53-item questionnaire was developed based on the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline, including mechanisms and processes (20 items), outcome evaluations (23 items), and resource integration (10 items). There was a “great difference” found among scores between facilitators and experts for “inter-exchange experience with local and international cities” (40%) and “monitor and revise indicators” (37%) in mechanisms and processes, “evaluate performance of indicators and action plans” (37%) in outcome evaluations, and “interaction between government and community” (46%) and “interaction between civil organization and senior society” (39%) in resource integration. Clearly, facilitators showed overly optimistic assessments in AFC mechanisms and processes, outcome evaluation, and resource integration. The results showed disconnect between experts’ expectations versus actual practice conducted by facilitators. Implications of these findings are to integrate top down expectations with the realities of bottom up practice to design more realistic evaluations; continue to educate stakeholders about design, implementation and evaluation; and further integrate resources from government, civil organizations, and community.

Eco-Efficiency and Private Firms’ Relationships with Heterogeneous Public Stakeholders in China

“…As a result, firms need to develop a deeper understanding of how they are able to more efficiently achieve the environmental goals. Building on prior research indicating that the established relationships with government and NGOs are the main driving forces of firms’ pro-environmental practices [ 5 , 26 ], our study focused on how these public stakeholder relationships lead firms to achieve increased value generation with reduced environmental impact. Interestingly, we found that an improvement of eco-efficiency is hindered by a firm’s relationship with the government because the power asymmetry, political legitimacy conferral, and issue urgency in a firm’s relationship with the government may hinder the process of integrating environmental knowledge into production.…”

“…However, the sources of stakeholder salience in the relationships between firms and their stakeholders have been less discussed in prior research. Majoch et al [ 26 ] found that normative power and organizational legitimacy are the main sources of investors’ salience in driving corporate social responsibility. Extending their research on a single stakeholder, we suggested that the sources of stakeholder salience differ for heterogeneous public stakeholders, with consequential impacts on firms’ environmental management.…”

“…Extant literature has demonstrated that firms have distinct relationships with stakeholders in terms of power, legitimacy, and urgency, all of which differently influence firms’ strategic response to stakeholders’ environmental concerns [ 12 , 25 ]. Besides the extent of stakeholder salience, its sources profoundly influence firms’ motivation and ability to acquire and absorb external knowledge from stakeholders [ 26 ]. From this perspective, a firm’s organizational learning of ecological initiatives can be constrained or improved by its relationships with different stakeholders.…”

Understanding stakeholders' concerns of age-friendly communities at the briefing stage: a preliminary study in urban China

“…Senior citizens Garon et al (2014), Liddle et al (2014), Chan and Cao (2015), Greenfield et al (2015), Lowen et al (2015), Moulaert and Garon (2015), Steels (2015), Chan et al (2016), Cho and Kim (2016), Orpana et al (2016), Sixsmith et al (2017), Buffel and Phillipson (2018), Buffel (2019), Lin et al (2019)…”

“…Local governments and policymaking institutions Garon et al (2014), Liddle et al (2014), Menec et al (2014), Chan and Cao (2015), Greenfield et al (2015), Lowen et al (2015), Moulaert and Garon (2015); Spina and Menec (2015), Steels (2015), Chan et al (2016), Cho and Kim (2016), Orpana et al (2016), Gudowsky et al (2017), Sun et al (2017), Greenfield (2018), Lin et al (2019)…”