Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
approaches include building models of an area, or
drawing a map, or putting up stickers on a wall on
key issues. Successful stakeholder engagement
techniques seek to promote the creation of group
cohesion; as Aristotle (1955) argued, virtue is
a matter of habit. In turn, the decision-making
approach will tend to seek progressively to
eliminate options rather than tofind an 'optimum'
solution, and to focus initially upon areas of agree-
ment rather than on issues about which there is
a conflict.
The engagement process will become governed
by a system of implicit or explicit rules, and those
rules can strongly affect the success of the process.
Thus, in jury trials, starting deliberations by set-
ting out to agree what are the key evidential points
upon which establishing guilt depends has been
found to be more 'successful' than going around
the table asking for
learning' (Craps 2003; Ison et al. 2004; Adank
et al. 2006). Furthermore, stakeholder engagement
has to be understood not just as a learning exercise
in relation to a single decision but also as learning
how to improve the process. Any stakeholder
engagement process involves learning about the
process and so it should be reflective.
To be successful, it has to be understood as
a social learning process largely undertaken
through language use rather than as a mechanical
exercise involving the communication of infor-
mation. Since it is a process largely conducted
through language, it is also necessary to recognize
the nature of language and that language use is
itself a social act (Berger and Luckman 1967). The
stakeholders will be conducting conversations
with each other; it is necessary to avoid regarding
language use as no more than a form of commu-
nication or that the content of that communica-
tion is information. The purpose of conversation is
to influence either the self or the other.
It is also necessary to understand the nature of
language itself. Attempts are sometimes made to
provide definitive definitions of such terms as
'risk' or 'vulnerability'. Indeed, early philosophers
of language (Wittgenstein 1961) and semioticians
(de Saussure 1983) argued that there should be
a one-to-one correspondence between a word and
its meaning. This gave an unwarranted appear-
ance of neutrality to language when a major pur-
pose of language use is to influence others
(Hajer 1995). Secondly, it is the permeability of
language and the ability to use it in the form of
metaphors and analogies that make language use-
ful (Wittgenstein 1958). Hence, any attempt to
formulate definitive definitions of words is to mis-
understand the nature of language.
As a social process, it is necessary to build both
the community of stakeholders and the social
process (Figueroa et al. 2002). Classically, com-
munities are described as a group in 'communion'
with each other so conversation defines a com-
munity. Many of the exercises proposed for stake-
holder engagement, such as those proposed by
Chambers (2002), are centred on community
building, and there is generally a strong emphasis
on collective action to build a community. Such
initial votes on guilt
(Darbyshire et al. 2002).
The frequent emphasis on 'leadership' as pro-
moting successful stakeholder engagement shows
that the importance lies in skills rather than the
adoption of techniques. Those skills are those of
interpersonal relations, such as in conversation
(Stone et al. 1999), emotional intelligence
(Goleman 1996), intercultural communication
(Lustig and Koester 1993), and team-working
(Handy 1999).
What is Successful Stakeholder Engagement?
The purpose of stakeholder engagement is to do it
successfully. Hence, a starting question is: what do
we mean by success? What the appropriate criteria
are for assessing project appraisal techniques has a
history (Penning-Rowsell et al. 1992), but in this
context some of those criteria refer to making and
implementing 'better' choices where what may be
meant by 'better' has already been discussed.
We measure success by change: change from
what otherwise would have occurred or that
occurs elsewhere. Hence, measuring success is
centred on measuring some form of change, and
the question is: what are the factors in which we
hope to observe change? Since we want to do
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