Mapping stakeholders

The objective of every stakeholder mapping process is to develop a useful list of stakeholders. The next step should then be to assess their key characteristics and present this information in a way that helps the project team implement effective stakeholder management initiatives. The key element of an effective mapping process is as far as possible to replace subjectivity with objective measures and to make the assessment process transparent. This transparency will allow the basis of any assessment to be clearly understood by others and will facilitate review and updating as appropriate.

The challenge with stakeholder mapping is that the elements being assessed, such as the level of a stakeholder’s support, are driven fi rstly by the perceptions of the project held by the stakeholder and secondly the perceptions of the stakeholder’s attitudes held by the people undertaking the mapping process. These factors are infl uenced by the ‘hardwiring’ in each person’s mind and because of this infl uence two people can have completely different ‘views’ of the same situation.

Chapter 7 in Construction Stakeholder Management by Ezekiel Chinyio and Paul Olomolaiye