A missed opportunity: understanding community stakeholders' perspectives

Sara Walton; Cheryl J Rivers

doi:10.1080/14486563.2011.591521

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A missed opportunity: understanding community stakeholders' perspectives

Journal article

Peer reviewed

A missed opportunity: understanding community stakeholders' perspectives

Sara Walton and Cheryl J Rivers

Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, Vol.18(3), pp.155-169

2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14486563.2011.591521

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Abstract

meanings-based analysis

environmental conflicts

community engagement

Resource companies are moving increasingly toward transformational engagement with their community stakeholders, where they have joint learning and sense-making of the issues. A key antecedent to successful engagement at this level is ensuring that the company has an understanding of the perspectives of the community stakeholders and the meaning behind statements made by them. In this paper, we present a three-step meanings-based analysis technique that can help companies better understand their community stakeholders' perspective in the initial stage of the engagement process. We describe each step and demonstrate the application to public submissions about the Nevis River in New Zealand, and explain how they differ from conventional issue or stakeholder analysis. The first step is to generate text sufficiently rich that it can be analysed for meaning. The other two steps of the analysis are to generate a set of statements used by stakeholders to describe their sense of the issue and then to identify the positions that stakeholders adopt in relation to the issue. Applying the technique can enhance understanding of community stakeholders' perspectives and move a resource company toward transformational engagement.

Details

Title: A missed opportunity: understanding community stakeholders' perspectives
Authors: Sara Walton (Author) - University of Otago, New Zealand
Cheryl J Rivers (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Business
Publication details: Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, Vol.18(3), pp.155-169
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Date published: 2011
DOI: 10.1080/14486563.2011.591521
ISSN: 1448-6563
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99449986302621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration; International collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Environmental Studies

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