Formulating strategies for stakeholder management: a case-based reasoning approach

Abstract

The management of competing stakeholders has emerged as an important weapon for strategic management. Typically, reactive, defensive, accommodative, or proactive (RDAP) strategies have been employed for getting into the world of stakeholders. This paper proposes a methodology for formulating strategies for stakeholder management by the use of these RDAP strategies. Our methodology consists of four phases: stakeholder analysis, strategy retrieval, strategy revision, and strategy implementation. Strategies are derived on the basis of similar cases stored in case bases. A system called the stakeholder management strategy support system (SMSS) is implemented to put our methodology to work. In order to demonstrate the practical usefulness of this system, Korean Healthcare IT (Information Technology) industry is illustrated. This illustration implies that our methodology is useful, especially in view of dynamic nature of business and its stakeholders. Our methodology will be able to help any business leader create value while navigating a multi-stakeholder environment. (c) 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.