Identifying and characterising stakeholders and their roles in pre, on-, and post-model analyses. D2.1 PRIMA collaborative project, EU 7th Framework Programme, contract no. 212345
Résumé
Building on a selective literature review this deliverable provides a framework for identifying and characterising stakeholders and their roles in PRIMA. The origins of the modern stakeholder concept are in the corporate management literature. Numerous different definitions of stakeholders' have been produced and range from a narrow focus on the survival of the firm to the pursuit of broader objectives such as corporate social responsibility. In corporate theory, engagement and management of stakeholders is an important activity and many theories and classifications have been developed to enable corporations to distinguish between and prioritise their efforts in this respect. Useful criteria, which are expected to be used in PRIMA, include the degree of stakeholder influence and interest. The stakeholder concept has also been applied to natural resource management problems, and to policy analysis, and it is this approach which is more appropriate for PRIMA. Stakeholder approaches have been used to gain an intimate understanding of the socio-economic processes underlying use of scarce natural resources such as water, forestry and ecosystems especially in the face of complexity such as uncertain property rights and non-market goods. Acquisition of an accurate and in-depth understanding of these processes can assist the development of successful solutions. Four types of stakeholder roles are identified in PRIMA's DOW. At the pre-modelling stage information will be elicited from stakeholders to enable behaviour rules for the main actors in rural areas to be drawn up, to inform the agent based modelling (ABM). Also at the pre-model stage policy scenarios will be designed. At the on-model stage, stakeholders will assist model improvement, and at the post-model stage, stakeholders will be engaged in validating final outputs. It is envisaged that two types of stakeholders will be engaged in these participative processes. The PRIMA Description of work (DOW) defines stakeholders as actors within rural areas as well as policymakers at different levels'. Firstly will be the actors whose behaviour will be represented in the agent based models. To select these stakeholders, three steps are envisaged: i. defining the policy, its effects, processes and boundaries. ii. identifying the groups and individuals who are affected by those social and natural systems , and iii. prioritising those groups and individuals for involvement in the process. Identifying key contacts can be achieved by starting with known contacts and then snowballing. The second group will be involved in policy scenario development and model output validation. It is likely to include policy experts and practitioners who may also be conceptualised as stakeholders who represent the interests of civil society, on whose behalf they develop appropriate policies. One approach for policy scenario development is to attempt to mirror the group actually involved in formulating policy for the locality, although a final decision on the approach to be taken has not yet been reached. Theoretically either group might be involved in the on-model stage (model improvement).