Stakeholder management

Managers of organisations are challenged to deal with wicked problems, increasing influence of various stakeholders, and changing business ecosystems. They need to make decisions under increasing complexity and uncertainty. However, traditional business strategy, management and organisational concepts and strategic planning approaches are no longer sufficient for managers to deal with the new challenges and developments.

Therefore, these managers need new ideas, (social and product) innovations, concepts and new managerial approaches. To deal with the mounting complexity and increasing volatility, managers can employ participative stakeholder engagement approaches such as open strategy, framing, group model building and strategic scenario development, to accurately decipher and respond to changing circumstances. These approaches provide a manager with important tools to:

• Support organisations to understand and develop shared framing
• Provide a series of narratives of the future and an early-warning system
• Support cultural change through organisational alignment and stakeholder engagement
• Develop a viable business