Professor Machan was discussing a use of stakeholder theory to force political changes. That is just an attempt to implement altruism/collectivism (all dressed up as if were a sociological/ethical theory) - to justified using force to achieve an elite's social end. I can't say how much I miss Tibor Machan and his clarity of thought. He was such a great loss to us all. --------------------- I had to seek out stakeholders.... but as a private citizen who could not (and would not use force). I just used the concept of 'Stakeholder' to have successful projects. For the projects I managed, my rule of thumb was to treat a person (or a group) as a 'Stakeholder' if 1.) they could materially aid the sucess of the project and would be affected by it (in which case I wanted to help them make a contribution), or 2.) if, at some point in the development or rollout, they could hurt the project's success - these last were the most important; they were the ones I searched more carefully for; they were the ones I worked to get a positive agreement with. The project context that connected stateholders to the project, from my view, were always either: 1.) lines of authority (does the project change anyones authority or require their authority), 2.) actors in the different procedures (does the project change their day to day procedures), and 3.) money (sometimes there are remote budget considerations that cross department line - e.d., will your project's success reduce some other departments personnel needs?). Here is an example of a project that was a complete success... till a month after it was rolled out: I didn't include truck drivers as stakeholders in a project that used mobile mapping devices. I thought I was seeing nothing but benefits for them and that they would welcome it. Had I spent more time with the drivers and gained their confidence, I'd have learned that they saw the mobile device as taking away some of their authority in route decisions. They effectively sabotaged the product after it was rolled out. I could have prevented that. I was then, and am now, suspicious of attempts to declare someone a stakeholder as an act of giving authority to a group that should NOT have that authority. On occasions their are political or politically correct urges behind the attempt to include some group as 'stakeholders'. In one place where I rolled out projects, I was forced to include the union as a stakeholder even where they should not have been. In the end, most of those projects worked when the union was treated as if it was important enough to be included. I couldn't get a senior official who was willing to keep the union in hand when what they were doing was just political. Stakeholder analysis is a murky business, often a sham and nonsense, but those responsible for sheparding a project to success have no choice but to look carefully for stakeholders and they aren't always obvious or visible at first glance.
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