Electron Markets
DOI 10.1007/s12525-013-0143-5
SPECIAL THEME
Dynamic stakeholder interaction analysis: Innovative smart
living design cases
Sam Solaimani & Nick Guldemond & Harry Bouwman
Received: 6 November 2012 / Accepted: 19 August 2013
# The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract In order to become more innovative, companies
that operate in the Smart Living domain increasingly initiate
and participate in networked business environments that transcend industry boundaries. Inter-organizational collaboration
is often characterized by conflicting strategic interests and
incoherent operational business processes and procedures.
Although many scholars and practitioners use stakeholder
analysis to gain insight into the actors’ relationships and
interactions, existing literature on stakeholder analysis focuses
mainly on high-level strategic analysis, often limited to a
conceptual and static understanding of stakeholder interests.
In this paper, it is argued that a ‘true’ understanding of stakeholders can be achieved by looking at their interactions and
interdependencies at a more detailed level. This study uses a
conceptual framework from the service innovation and business model domain, the VIP framework, to extend stakeholder
analysis by including an analysis of their dynamic interactions
and processes. The qualitative evaluation of the framework’s
application in illustrative design cases shows that this
Responsible Editor: Ulrike E. Lechner
S. Solaimani (*) : H. Bouwman
Faculty Technology, Policy, and Management,
Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5,
2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands
e-mail: h.solaimani@tudelft.nl
H. Bouwman
e-mail: w.a.g.a.bouwman@tudelft.nl
N. Guldemond
Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science
Department Interactive Intelligence,
Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 4,
2600 AA Delft, The Netherlands
e-mail: n.a.guldemond@tudelft.nl
H. Bouwman
IAMSR, Åbo Akademi, Turku, Finland
extension provides additional insights into stakeholders, and
their potential operational conflicts and critical dependencies.
By making these conflicts and interdependencies explicit,
products and services are potentially easier to implement and
commercialize.
Keywords Stakeholder analysis . Business models .
Networked business . Inter-organizational systems smart living
Introduction
Over the last three decades, the concept of Smart Homes,
which originally focused mainly on home automation, has
evolved into broader concepts like Ubiquitous Computing,
Ambient Intelligence, Internet of Things and, more recently,
Smart Living. Collaborations in the Smart Living domain not
only transcend the limited physical boundaries of the living
environment, they also cross business and industry boundaries. Firms are increasingly looking for new opportunities
within and beyond their existing ecosystems and work together with actors from related industries. With the emergence of
product and services innovations across business and industry
boundaries, the identification and management of stakeholders has become more complex (Bunn et al. 2002), as
has the need to balance the conflicting business model requirements, practices and processes of inter-organizational
business partners. A common approach that is used to reduce
this complexity is ‘stakeholder analysis’, the aim of which is
to understand a system by identifying its key actors or stakeholders and assessing their respective interest in the system in
question (Grimble and Wellard 1997). Although many publications have examined a wide variety of topics related to
stakeholder identification and analysis (Donaldson and
Preston 1995), strategic management literature is mainly dominated by high-level, mainly static, interpretation of
S. Solaimani et al.
stakeholders interests, their interactions and requirements, rather than determining what the implications
are for the implementation of innovative systems and
the associated business models of networked businesses.
Business Model literature has insufficiently examined
the operational arrangements of inter-organizational collaboration to exploit innovations and innovative business models (Bouwman et al. 2013). Most stakeholder
publications focus on topics like stakeholder analysis
definition, classification, application domain and abstract incremental methods to perform the analysis, as
perceived by one individual core actor. However, scant
attention is paid to changing stakeholder requirements
and arrangements, in particular, stakeholders involved
in networked businesses. This paper contributes to
stakeholder literature as well as to business model
literature by analyzing the dynamic interactions and
processes between stakeholders in a networked business
environment.
In practice, there are developments in two directions. To
begin with, stakeholders and their interactions within
networked ecosystems are continuously changing, which
means that a static approach does not reflect reality and leads
to business model designs in which the exchange of value is
unbalanced, information-sharing is complex, and operational
process are not aligned. As a result, many innovative projects
do not materialize. Examples can be found in (e)healthcare,
smart living projects that focus on ambient assisted living,
eGov projects, etc. (Solaimani et al. 2013). Bouwman et al.
(2013) suggest a dynamic approach in which stakeholders,
including intended users, are involved in every phase of the
design project, from ideation to commercialization, focusing
on the artefact and user requirements, as well as on the
business model(s) of the networked businesses designing
and providing the core service. Secondly, in operational
terms, a stakeholder analysis and a business model analysis
should always and systematically take stakeholder interactions into account, connecting business models to value exchange, information sharing and business processes alignment. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework that
applies existing stakeholder and business model approaches to
a networked environment and to carry out an analysis of the
operational interactions of stakeholders in three small-scale
illustrative design cases. The research question is: how can
dynamic, operational interactions between networked
stakeholders be made explicit in different phases of a
design process? To answer this question, the paper is organized as follows. First, a discussion is provided of existing
stakeholder analysis literature. To capture the relevant characteristics of a network-based stakeholder analysis, i.e. the dynamics and operational interactions, the Value, Information
and Process (VIP) framework (Solaimani and Bouwman
2012) is introduced. According to this framework, the
operational components that need to be taken into account
are values and information created by and exchanged between stakeholders as well as operational processes running
through and across stakeholders. The framework is applied
in three small-scale explorative design cases. Explorative
design cases are employed to qualitatively explore whether
and how the VIP framework may contribute to understanding stakeholders dynamics from an operational level. The
paper concludes with a discussion about the contribution
that this study may have for the traditional well-established
stakeholder analysis, both from an academic and practical
viewpoint.
The concept of stakeholder analysis
Since the formal introduction of the stakeholder concept in
1963, the concept has appeared in an international memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute (Freeman 1984), and
numerous books and articles have been published on this
concept (Donaldson and Preston 1995). Freeman defines the
concept of stakeholder in relatively broad terms: “…any
group or individual who can affect or is affected by the
achievement of the organization’s objectives” (Freeman
1984, p. 46). Publications on stakeholders have focused in
areas as diverse as strategic management, international relations, policy development, participatory research and ecology
to natural resource management (Ramírez 1999). Even more
publications have appeared on the subject of stakeholder
analysis (Preston and Sapienza 1990), which uses a range of
tools to identify and describe stakeholders on the basis of their
attributes, interrelationships and interests, in relation to a
given issue (Ramírez 1999; Pouloudi and Whitley 1997).
Some scholars associate stakeholder analysis with the elicitation and satisfaction of the expectations of stakeholders
(Mason and Mitroff 1981; Freeman 1984), while others focus
on concepts like fairness, equity and social rights (Gibson
2000) or ethical values (Goodpaster 1991) as concepts that
have a major relevance to stakeholders. Simmons and
Lovegrove (2005) demonstrate the value of stakeholder analysis
with regard to performance management as a ‘middle ground’
research method. In the area of requirements engineering, Sharp
et al. (1999) emphasize the relevance of stakeholder theory as a
domain-independent, effective and pragmatic approach to
eliciting stakeholder requirements. In addition, a comprehensive
understanding of stakeholders and their potential influence on
the organization -either positive or negative- is ought to be
essential in determining strategic marketing planning and marketing strategy formation (Polonsky 1996; Clulow 2005).
Literature on stakeholder analysis also shows that several
authors have attempted to identify and classify stakeholders.
Mitchell et al. (1997) focuses on an explicit recognition of
situational uniqueness and on management prioritization of
Extended stakeholder analysis
stakeholder (strategic) relationships, identifying stakeholders
on the basis of (1) their power to influence a firm, (2) the
legitimacy of their relationships with the firm and (3) the
urgency of their claims on the firm. Clarkson (1995) classifies
primary stakeholders, i.e. stakeholders who are essential to the
survival and well-being of an organization, and secondary
stakeholders, i.e. stakeholders with whom an organization
interacts, but these interactions are complementary rather than
essential. In this paper, we focus on the latter.
Existing literature also provides different models and approaches to designing and carrying out a stakeholder analysis.
Mason and Mitroff (1981) propose a four-stage approach: (1)
identification, (2) generation of assumption about stakeholder
expectations, (3) evaluation of the assumptions and (4) selection of strategies based on the evaluated assumptions, while
Elias et al. (2002), Schmeer (1999) and, more recently,
Enserink et al. (2010) have also developed staged models for
a systematic stakeholder analysis, proposing a six-stage analysis approach consisting of (1) problem formulation, (2) inventory of the stakeholders involved, (3) development of a chart to
illustrate the stakeholders’ formal tasks, authorities, relations
and current legislation, (4) identification of interests, objectives
and problems, (5) identification of the interdependencies
between stakeholders and, finally, (6) identification of the
consequences with regard to the problem formulated initially.
In addition to these staged methods, there are a number of
tools aimed at facilitating stakeholder analysis, including Crosby
(1992), who provides a stakeholder matrix, Sambamurthy and
Desanctis (1990), who use Group Decision Support Systems
(GDSS), Gupta (1995), who proposes a conceptual stakeholder
map, Varvasovszky and Brugha (2000), who provide a set of
preliminary interrelated questions combined with qualitative
research methodologies (e.g. interview, Delphi methods) to
identify and understand stakeholders needs, relationships and
interests, and Bourne and Walker (2005), who provide a mapping tool to visualize the power, influence and contribution of
stakeholders within a given organization.
Thus far, existing stakeholder literature has mainly been
strategic and problem-solving in nature. However, stakeholder
analysis also plays an important role in design research. Several frameworks have been proposed to identify and understand stakeholder requirements, originating from various disciplines, including Information System (IS) design, Software
Development and System Design. Chung et al. (1999), for
instance, provide a model that systematically represents and
addresses the quality requirements during architectural enterprise design, by focusing on stakeholder dependencies.
Hummel et al. (2002) argue that the use of methods supporting
and managing the knowledge of the stakeholders involved
improves stakeholder model design processes, while Bergman
et al. (2007) emphasize the relevance of the organizational and
political context design, arguing that significant improvements in systems design can be achieved by focusing on
questions like (1) what system(s) can be built and delivered
within the given environment, and (2) how can stakeholder
interests be aligned with the proposed designs to mobilize
willingness and resources. Herder et al. (2008) combine a
technical and social system design to acquire a better understanding of the behaviour of complex socio-technical systems,
and to effectively support better designs and design processes.
Pohl (2010) proposes a requirements engineering framework
that consists of the core requirements of engineering activities,
with the aim of establishing the vision within the existing
context, techniques for eliciting, negotiating and documenting
as well as validating, and managing the requirements of
software-intensive systems.
The actual process of stakeholder requirements elicitation
is conducted via the so-called trawling techniques collected
and presented by Robertson (2000), including interviewing
(Herder and Stikkelman 2004), simulation models (e.g., scenarios, prototyping) (Chung et al. 1999), use-case workshops
(Luqi and Kordon 2008). Several methodologies are used to
identify and formalize stakeholder requirements, examples of
which are Natural Language Processing (NLP), used to analyse the dialogues between stakeholders (Sawyer et al. 2008;
Kof 2008), the i* framework (Yu 1997; Chung et al. 1999),
used to reveal goals, tasks resources of and exchanges between
the stakeholders (Teruel et al. 2011), meta-model, used to reveal
the values being exchanged and the design variables, constraints and performance indicators (Herder and Stikkelman
2004). Ballejos and Montagna (2011) propose a model
representing the stakeholders and their roles, interest and influence attributes, while the KAOS framework, proposed by Van
Lamsweerde (2001), is used to elicit, specify and analyse goals,
requirements, scenarios and responsibility assignments.
Most of these techniques and models, however, insufficiently reflect on (1) the operational arrangement of the primary
stakeholders involved in inter-organizational innovative design
projects, and (2) the dynamic character of their roles, interactions and interdependencies. With regard to the former, many
approached focus predominantly on an abstract, more strategic
understanding of stakeholder interests and requirements, rather
than identifying what operational interaction components are
and how they affect innovative applications, products or services. Moreover, the question as to what the best way is to
analyse these inter-organizational interaction components is
rarely addressed. There are a few approaches that focus on the
more operational aspects. In particular when the design of
Information Systems is at stake, the focus becomes clearer. In
essence, in that case, stakeholders include anyone who operates,
benefits from or develops the system, as well as anyone within
the inter-organizational ecosystem who has to relate their
existing systems to the new system. This paper focuses on cases
where multiple organizations have to align their information
systems, their value and information exchanges and their operational processes, while at the same time having to keep their
S. Solaimani et al.
eye on their business model. Existing models, like the i*
framework, merely focus on goals, tasks and resources, while
(information) architectural approaches, only include information as a resource. In addition, most existing approaches adopt a
static view on the stakeholders involved and their interactions,
defining future interactions based on current analysis. Generally
speaking, these static approaches are used in the first stage of
design, for example during the ideation and requirement elicitation phases of a design cycle. Stakeholder requirement and
relationship analysis are not meant to be reiterated throughout
the different phases of a design project. For instance, in the case
of Agile (software) projects, business requirements are explicated only in the initial ideation phase (Bouwman et al. 2012).
Also, in large multi-party R&D projects where prototypes are
developed, the question is raised in the commercialization phase
who is going to exploit the artefact that has been developed and
how the relevant stakeholders have to align the exchange of
value and information and operational processes to exploit the
artefact. Consequently, Bouwman et al. (2013) argue that stakeholder analysis should not serve as a commercial validation of
the final product, service or artefact, but that the focus should be
on stakeholder involvement and requirements in all the phases
of an innovation, R&D or design project, from ideation to
commercialization,. Stakeholders should be involved in the
entire process to capture and evaluate their interests, the dynamic behaviour of stakeholders and their changing requirements,
and their mutual interdependencies, while being aware that
stakeholder objectives and focus change or are replaced, because there is a need for other resources and assets in different
phases of a project. .
With regard to stakeholders, it is also important to emphasize the role of users as a separate stakeholder category.
Usually, methods and tools used to develop user-centric designs are elaborated in far greater detail than tools aimed at
involving other stakeholder groups in design processes. Contextual interviews, participatory observation, Group Decision
Support sessions, individual (open) interviews, conjoint analysis, lab experiments and field trials, are only a few examples.
Actively involving users as members of the design team is
another example. Generally speaking, user-centric design is
Fig. 1 The VIP framework
(adapted from Solaimani and
Bouwman 2012)
well-established and sufficient attention is paid to the identification of user requirements, which is why users are not
discussed as stakeholders in great detail in this paper.
To take existing stakeholder analysis models a step further,
in the next section, an approach is proposed in which stakeholder analysis is enriched with insights related to more operational inter-organizational stakeholder arrangements.
An extended stakeholder analysis approach
In this paper, it is argued that a real challenge throughout any
design project is aligning the business objectives of stakeholders with the underlying operational arrangements when
moving from ideation to commercialization. This alignment
requires an in-depth understanding of stakeholders and their
multiple, mutual relationships, which can only can be
achieved by breaking open the stakeholder interactions. This
paper zooms in on stakeholder interactions, which means that
the stakeholder analysis is de facto separated from its traditional, more strategic, definition, and the focus shifts towards
a framework that is developed and applied in the area of
service innovation, design and engineering (Solaimani and
Bouwman 2012). The framework analyses the interdependencies and dynamic operational arrangements between the
primary stakeholders in three domains: (1) the ‘value domain’,
which describes which value objectives are defined, which
value objects (resources and capabilities) are needed, what
value activities are executed and how value creation is
interdependent; (2) the ‘information domain’, which describes
which information needs to be available and how information
is created and exchanged between stakeholders and what
interdependencies exist, and (3) the ‘primary business processes’, providing a detailed description of the primary business activities shared and performed by the stakeholders (see
Fig. 1).
Each domain contains multiple sub-components. The value
objects and activities describe the value-creating actors (i.e.
the stakeholders and end-users), the dynamic relationship
between the actors, the value they create, exchange and
Extended stakeholder analysis
sustain, and their interdependencies. The information-oriented
components analyse the actors’ access to data, information
and knowledge as well as the flow of information and the
information dependencies. The business process-oriented
components contain the primary business processes, which
allow the actual value to be created. In addition, process
behaviour and dependencies are subject to analysis in this
domain. The Value, Information, Process (VIP) framework
(Solaimani and Bouwman 2012) has an integrative and hierarchical structure. Insights gained from the higher value layer
can be related to the lower information level, or to the process
level. Within the various levels, a distinction between actorrelated components, interaction-related components and
emerging dependencies can be described. The interplay between the domains and components involved can be a source
of conflict between different actors. The next section contains
the description of three small scale design projects in which
the model is used to understand the idiosyncrasies of the
networked businesses at play in each specific case.
Three illustrative design cases
The model was used in three innovative design projects carried out by university-based teams. The projects were proposed by a number of companies from various industries. The
teams were supported by two coaches from the university and
one or two coaches from the companies involved. Each team
consisted of five students from different university departments, including industrial design, business and management
and computer engineering. The three projects were related to
healthcare, mobility and energy, all relevant topics from a
Smart Living perspective. The Mobility project examined
the possibilities to support car drivers by an automatic, or
‘smart’, merging on highways. The team analysed various
scenarios with regard to an ICT-supporting system to be used
inside cars. Simulation tools were used in the implementation
phase to assess and evaluate the proposed scenarios. The aim
of the Energy project was to help a municipality in the
Netherlands to become fossil-free by 2020. The goal was to
develop a system that provides a real-time calculation and
visualization of the financial impact of the green investments
of the municipality and energy providers. The system was
intended to be accessible via the Internet for all the stakeholders involved. The aim of the Health project was to develop a preventive health system application based on several
gaming elements, designed to motivate and facilitate users to
adopt a healthier life-style and at the same time improve
communication between users and healthcare professionals
(including life-style coaches), with the ultimate goal of improving the life-style of patients with diabetes and obesity.
The projects were intended to run for a period of 6 months,
divided into four phases, reflecting the phases in a design
process (ideation, conceptualization, implementation and
commercialization). In the first two phases of the projects,
the traditional strategic stakeholder analyses were carried out:
identification of the stakeholders, business requirements and
priorities (as suggested by Freeman 1984; Mason and Mitroff
1981). In line with Mason and Mitroff (1981), Crosby (1992),
and Enserink et al. (2010), the teams were requested to 1)
define the problem, 2) identify the stakeholders, stakeholder
interests and resources involved, 3) generate assumptions
regarding stakeholder expectations (and requirements), and
4) evaluate the position of the various stakeholders (either in
favour or against) with regard to project objectives. Table 1
presents a detailed picture of how the teams involved the
stakeholders, where their focus lay and what the outcome
was of their approach, throughout the different project phases.
The teams used various sources (including several open and
semi-structural interviews) to obtain detailed insight into the
stakeholders involved, including the users, and their needs and
limitations. In general, the teams posed various ‘how’ and
‘what’ questions, not only to gain an in-depth understanding
of the explicit business requirements of the stakeholders, but
also to understand the less visible operational challenges.
Additionally, during the first phase, the teams and the industry
and university partners carried out a preliminary literature
review and a market analysis, including relevant legislation
and regulation, local or national government policies, technology and business reports, Internet resources and stakeholder
websites. They also conducted (open) interviews with stakeholders, with the aim of writing an initial business plan, and
talked to intended end-users, either face-to-face or via group
interviews (see Table 1). In all cases, the focus was on understanding the problem as well as the legal and political boundaries of the design space (especially in Mobility and Energy
projects) or the boundaries that existed as a result of relationship between doctors and patients. The business plans included an introduction, a problem statement and an initial stakeholder analysis, a market analysis and business model
alternatives.
In the second phase, the teams worked out their business
plan and business model, and described how the intended
business would create and capture value for users and stakeholders. They discussed their intended business from four
different business model perspectives: the service to be delivered, the technological architecture, organizational arrangements and finance (in accordance with Bouwman et al. 2008).
Stakeholder and business requirements were essential in this
phase of all the projects, with an emphasis on the financial and
legal requirements in the Mobility case, (inter-organizational)
information system interoperability in the Energy case and the
relevance of gaming in Healthcare case. In the healthcare
project, storyboard sessions with end-users were organized.
Information that was needed to formulate and agree on the
business model made it necessary to conduct another round of
S. Solaimani et al.
Table 1 Stakeholder management throughout different phases
Teams
Stakeholders involvement
Teams’ focus
Outcome
Mobility Ideation
Stakeholders: multiple open
interviews
Users: small scale survey among
drivers
◦ Understanding the problem
statement,
◦ Identification of projects
limitations (e.g., the
problems of cars merging
on highways, law and
regulation, finance, and user
perceptions)
◦ Financial planning
◦ Business requirements,
including technical potentials
and project uniqueness
◦ Encouraging the leading
partner to provide more
resources
◦ Technical requirements
(e.g., requirements
elicitation and morphological
analysis)
◦ Simulation criteria
(e.g., security, comfort)
◦ System operation
evaluation (e.g., technical
feasibility)
◦ Business and process
alignment
◦ Scalability (and finance)
◦ An initial business plan and business model
◦ Preliminary stakeholder analysis
(mainly focused on the identification
of actors and their interests and resources)
Energy
Conceptualization
Stakeholders: Individual semistructural interviews the leading
companies managers
Users: interview with a number of
drivers
Implementation
Stakeholders: brainstorm session
with the leading companies
technicians and management
Users: simulation tool to evaluate
users-requirements
Commercialization Stakeholders: Discussion with the
leading stakeholder regarding
project follow-up
Users: planning simulation experiment
with drivers in future
Ideation
Stakeholders: Open interview with
a wide range of stakeholders
varying from governmental
institutes, NGO’s, energy providers
Users: interview with both prosumers
(e.g., farmers), and consumers
Conceptualization Stakeholders: Few collective
meetings with the nongovernmental companies (enables
by the municipality), and semistructural interviews with related
companies
Users: semi-structural interviews
with prosumers and customers
Implementation
Stakeholders: Prototyping together
with stakeholders
Users: semi-structural interviews with
one of the most active users
Commercialization Stakeholders and users: Presentation
of the final solution at municipality
with the presence of various public
and private companies
◦ Stakeholder analysis
(business objectives)
◦ Developing a (collective)
business model
◦ Being invited to work on the project
inside the company with an
intensified collaboration as a consequence
◦ Evaluation of the solution using an
advanced computer simulation tool
◦ The leading company has set up a new
follow-up project (e.g., experimenting
with actual drivers)
◦ Understanding the problem
statement,
◦ Project planning,
◦ Law and regulations
◦ Local policies
◦ An early business plan and business model
◦ Stakeholder identification
(due to large number of actors)
◦ Companies business
requirements
◦ Reaching a consensus on
business objectives
◦ Stakeholders’ systems
interoperability,
◦ A long list of business requirements
of the involved stakeholders
◦ A (collective) business model for a
public use, with information regarding
green investment of the participating
companies
◦ The list of requirements were to
conflicting and complex that the team
chose to exclude individual consumers
◦ Software mock-up, only to be used by
municipality and professional users
◦ Data regarding green
investments
◦ Technical requirements
◦ Business and processalignment
◦ Broad diffusion of software
◦ In the end, the software was not adopted
by the companies, for strategic reasons,
and the software was not launched online.
However, the municipality did adopt the
software, to calculate the impact of green
investments on overall performance, as
the information required is already in
possession of municipality. Nevertheless,
the municipality is urged to use the
software and companies data
confidentially.
Extended stakeholder analysis
Table 1 (continued)
Teams
Health
Ideation
Conceptualization
Stakeholders involvement
Teams’ focus
Stakeholders: Focus group with
life-style care providers
Users: interview with small number
of patients
◦ An early business plan and business
model
◦ Stakeholder analysis (identification
and collection of their interests and
expectations), a collection of lifestyle improving interventions based
on gaming elements
◦ Financial planning
◦ A business model for the leading
◦ Healthcare laws and regulations
online healthcare provider to include
(e.g., insurance policies,
various gaming elements in
medical privacy laws)
combination with real-life health
◦ Relevance of several gaming
coaches
elements
◦ Technical requirements
◦ An online pilot platform(dummy)
◦ Software testing
◦ Business and process
alignment
◦ Solution replicate-ability
◦ The leading healthcare provider has
for other diseases
integrated the end-solution into its
business. Also, a number of team
members continued their
collaboration after the project ended.
Stakeholders: Semi-structural
interview with various healthcare
service providers
Users: interviews with patients and
healthcare providers to make
storyboards
Implementation
Stakeholders: semi-structural
interviews with the leading
healthcare service provider
Users: Testing sessions with patients
Commercialization Stakeholders : Semi-structural
interview with the leading online
healthcare provider regarding
solution integration within the
provider’s existing platform
Users: pilot with a small number of
actual patients
Outcome
Understanding the problem
statement from medical and
users viewpoint
interviews with stakeholders, especially from the leading
company.
Throughout the third phase, the project teams focused
primarily on implementing their business plan and on translating the business objectives into a technical plan. Through
iterative interviews, the teams attempted to identify the technical requirements, while involving the stakeholders in the
technical (functional) design process. In close collaboration
with the stakeholders, especially the leading partner, the teams
tested or evaluated their ideas in pilot studies, simulation and
interviews. Also, the alignment between the previously defined business model and the established infrastructure, systems and processes of the stakeholders, was a subject of
analysis.
The teams extended their analysis by focusing on the
operational processes that stakeholders have or need to have
to realize their business needs. To this end, the teams used the
VIP framework (Fig. 1) to analyse the stakeholders’ operational arrangements, by focusing on (1) the creation, offering
and capture of value between the various stakeholders, including end-users, (2) the creation and exchange of information
and information dependencies, and (3) the primary business
processes between the various stakeholders. The teams
visualised their findings. The analysis was supported by joint
drawing sessions in which stakeholders were involved. The
drawing sessions and analysis helped the teams to reveal and
anticipate operational conflicts, complexities and/or problematic dependencies between the various stakeholders. For
instance, the healthcare design case shows the central role of
the core service provider in the entire diagram (Fig. 2) and the
key role of funding, while at the same time demonstrating that
the development of hardware and software plays a minor role
in the value creation processes. In addition, the relevant information flows were visualized.
In the Energy project, the visualization of the complex
network of information/data exchange between the various
actors shows the position of the actors involved with regard to
two dimensions, i.e. sustainability and long-term versus shortterm strategic orientation (Fig. 3).
These two dimensions were used to identify who the real
primary stakeholders in this project were, and to identify the
information flows for the final investment calculation system.
Process diagrams related to the actual execution of processes
for the Mobility design cases show the essential operational
interactions between stakeholders involved (Fig. 4). This
high-level process model was later worked out in a more
detailed diagram that describes which processes are essential
and how processes are interrelated and in what sequence, in
order to run the smart merging scenarios (comparable to
Business Process Modeling Notion [BPMN] representation
with events, activities, lanes and artefacts).1
1
For the sake of brevity, only these three illustrative diagrams are
reported in the paper. However, additional information, including a
detailed process diagram, is available on request.
S. Solaimani et al.
Fig. 2 Inter-organizational value
creation and exchange in Health
case
During the commercialization phase, the teams worked
towards the delivery of the solutions they had developed. In
two cases (Energy and Health), the teams closed the project
successfully with a working solution, which was adopted by
Fig. 3 Inter-organizational
information creation and
exchange in Energy case
one of the leading companies. In one case (Energy), the
intended solution was only implemented by the leading company and not, as was originally planned, by all the stakeholders.
The software is available under the core providers brand.
Extended stakeholder analysis
Fig. 4 The inter-organizational
business processes in Mobility
design case
Identifies and preserves
the interests of
transport sector
Identifies and preserves
the entrepreneurs’ interests
Ministerie of EZ
Transport and
Logistic Netherland
(TLN)
Identifies and preserves
issues regarding safety and security
VNO-NCW
Identifies and preseres issues
Identifies and preserves
regarding pricacy,
issues regarding financial viability
pricing and safety
Defines guidelines
Regarding efficiency
in time and space
ANWB
Ministry of V&W
Ministry of VROM
Defines guidelines
Regarding sustainability
Nature and Milieu
Develops of infrastructure
Defines guidelines
Regarding legislation
Defines rules
and standardization
Legislation application
And auditing
The design projects illustrate the relevance of making both the
strategic and the operational stakeholder relationships explicit.
The VIP model makes it possible to reveal conflicting interests
and conflicting operational processes. Moreover, simple design projects quickly become complex and the VIP diagrams
help to illustrate this complexity as well as the co-dependency
between the actors involved. To assess the value of the extended stakeholder model and of the VIP diagrams, different
project members were interviewed using a semi-structured
interview approach. In these interviews, the teams were asked
about their understanding of stakeholders before and after
using the extended stakeholder framework, and whether the
framework helped them anticipate conflicts between stakeholders and formulate a well-defined business implementation
plan. In addition, during team meetings, teams were observed
to determine ‘how teams apply the framework’ and ‘how they
make decisions around stakeholder analysis’. Two sets of
responses were collected with regard to (1) the value of the
extended stakeholder analysis approach and (2) problems
signalled when the approach was used to draw the VIP diagrams in joint sessions. By using the extended frameworks
and VIP-diagrams, the teams were forced to consider stakeholder interactions and relationships, information resource
dependencies and primary business processes in greater detail:
“the analysis gave us a broad and factual view of stakeholders
interactions, which sometimes was in contrast with our
defines the system
requirements
designs
infrastructure
Designs and develops
Of car systems
Customizes, adjusts or
TNO
Extends the car systems
Designs and manufactures
Cars based on the guidelines
Designs of new car systems
Europese Union
Validation of the use of the extended stakeholder model
Smart
Merging
System
VVN
Car Manufacturer
Bovag-Rai
intuitive image of reality…”, according to one participant in
the Mobility project, while a participant in the Energy team
made a similar remark regarding the level of detail of the
insights that had been generated. It also helped the teams to
identify the core actors and their relationships with the other
stakeholders: “The analysis gave us the chance to think how
the business processes of different stakeholders could be
connected to each other… and how operational processes
were intertwined with the information flow” , according to
one participant in energy project.
Similarly, the interviews indicate that the experiences of the
teams with the model and diagrams were generally positive.
“Although…the model was applied to explore the network of
stakeholders, we also reconsidered the model to evaluate the
services. We needed the analysis to reveal the patient groups
and related organizations, and their relations and interactions.” It is interesting to note that some of the extended
models domains seem to be more useful than others. For
example, the Energy project benefited more from the identification of value and information exchange, while the detailed
analysis of the stakeholders’ business processes turned out to
be less relevant. Nevertheless, the combination of all three
domains made it possible to arrive at a comprehensive view of
the value and information being exchanged between primary
stakeholders and their operational interactions. Furthermore,
the perceptions of the teams regarding the sequence, connectedness and complementariness of VIP domains and their
components were positive.
S. Solaimani et al.
The practical usability of the extended stakeholder approach is not always straightforward. One team complained
about the abstraction levels of some concepts and definitions,
for instance when discussing value exchange. Throughout the
analysis, the concept of value is interpreted in different ways.
The team discovered that some stakeholders associate value
with tangible values, while other stakeholders emphasize intangible benefits. Accordingly, the team adapted their model
to cover both types of values. Furthermore, the level of detail
with which the VIP concepts had to be described was not
always clear. Another issue was the perceived relevance and
usefulness of the extended stakeholder model, which seems to
vary in different projects and project phases. In the case of the
Energy project, for example, the merits of the framework in
the implementation phase were not clearly perceived, while in
the Healthcare project, the framework was applied during the
analysis in both design phases (ideation and implementation).
The modelling technique used to visualize the analysis is yet
another issue. Although the teams applied their own intuitive
approach to visualize the analysis, having access to homogeneous visualization tools seems to be desirable.
Discussion and conclusions
In the current economy, innovative services and products can
only be delivered by organizations that collaborate in creating
and capturing value. The collaboration, however, involves and
is enabled by activities, processes and information systems at
various levels of operations. Stakeholder analysis is emphasized as a promising approach to identify stakeholders and to
understand their needs. Literature on stakeholder analysis,
however, is relatively abstract, making it difficult to arrive at
a practical understanding of how stakeholders and their business/strategic intensions are often constraint by (interorganiztonal) operations. As a result, in many design projects
the role of the primary stakeholders (i.e., the collaborating
companies at the core of the project) is only analyzed at a
strategic level. In this paper, it is argued that, in addition to the
analysis of stakeholder policies and strategies, attention has to
be paid to stakeholders operations. To analyze stakeholders
operations, this paper borrows the VIP framework from business model literature and incorporates the framework in a
stakeholder analysis. The proposed model focuses on the
exchange of value and information, as well as on operational
processes, which is not common in stakeholder literature. In
addition, the model enables the analysis of the stakeholder at
various operational levels throughout different phases of the
design process. By focusing on the link between stakeholders’
business intentions and the underlying inter-organizational
processes, systems and infrastructure, the paper aims to describe and analyze the dynamic operational interactions, relations and interdependencies in greater detail. The paper
empirically explores the concept of extended analysis of
stakeholders (i.e. including stakeholders operations) through
multiple design cases.
The findings of the analysis shows that the extension was
valuable in all three design cases, both interms of (1) helping
the design teams to be more detailed about the core operational elements that impede stakeholders (collective) operations,
as well as (2) increasing team understanding about - and
enabling the identification of - the core value, information
and process level operations that stakeholders need to achieve
their (collective) business objectives. As such, the framework
allowed the teams to develop a comprehensive view of the
stakeholders involved and to explicate the interactions, relationships, interdependencies and essential business processes
in a more detailed manner. The framework helped explicate
how conflicting strategic interests of stakeholders has impact
on their relationship at an operational level (e.g., conflicting
systems integration and information access). The model made
it possible to analyze value and information exchange in
concert with operational processes, and to make clear where
misalignment between business and operations exist. Hence,
this paper argues that the model can serve as an intermediate
step in bridging the gap between high-level strategies and
business models, on the one hand, and the information systems, workflows and IT-supported processes, on the other.
Having said that, this was an explorative design project and
further development and validation of the model is needed.
With regard to the further development of the proposed VIP approach, several observed shortcomings can
be taken into account, including detailed and context-based
operationalisation of the framework’s components, development of formal methods to apply the framework, and
tools to visualize the outcome. In addition, in terms of
validation, there are a number of limitations. First of all,
this study was based on a limited number of design cases,
and the design projects were not formally developed as
a research project. The cases were only used for illustrative purposes and to gain insight into the viability of
the framework. Increasing the number of cases would
not only improve the validity of the results, but also
provide greater insight into the framework’s applicability and usefulness in other contexts. In short, this paper
should be seen as a first, modest and illustrative attempt
to expand stakeholder theories, with the aim of drawing
attention to a systematic analysis of the dynamic operational interactions and dependencies among stakeholders,
which in turn, helps to anticipate conflicting interactions
and to reveal critical interdependencies. Some suggestions for future research are (1) an elaboration on stakeholder analysis operationalization, by means of an extended model, (2) an empirical evaluation of stakeholder
analysis operationalization and its impact in a larger
open case study setting, and (3) the development of a
Extended stakeholder analysis
modelling technique designed to integrate and visualize
the extended stakeholder analysis.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the
source are credited.
References
Ballejos, L. C., & Montagna, J. M. (2011). Modeling stakeholders for
information systems design process. Requirements Engineering,
Springer.
Bergman, M., Lyytinen, K., & Mark, G. (2007). Boundary objects in
design: an ecological view of design artifacts. JAIS Journal of the
Association for Information Systems, 8(11), 546–568.
Bourne, L., & Walker, D. H. T. (2005). Visualising and mapping stakeholder influence. Management Decision, 43(5), 649–660.
Bouwman, H., De Vos, H., & Haaker, T. (2008). Mobile service
innovation and business models . Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
Bouwman, H., De Reuver, M., Solaimani, S., Daas, D., Haaker, T.,
Janssen, W., et al. (2012). Business models, tooling and research
agenda. In R. Clark, A. Pucihar, & J. Gricar (Eds.), The first 25 years
of the bled conference. Kraj: Moderna organizacija. *.
Bouwman, H., de Reuver, M., Hampe, F., Carlsson, C., Walden, P.
(2013). Mobile R&D prototypes; what is hampering market implementation? International Journal of Innovation and Technology
Management, 10(forthcoming).
Bunn, M., Savage, G. T., & Holloway, B. B. (2002). Stakeholder analysis
for multi-sector innovations. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 17(2/3), 181–203.
Chung, L., Gross, D., Yu, E. (1999). Architectural design to meet stakeholder requirements. In: P. Donohue (Ed.), Software architecture
(pp. 545–564). Kluwer Academic.
Clarkson, M. B. E. (1995). A stakeholder framework for analyzing and
evaluating corporate social performance. Academy of Management
Review, 20(1), 92–117.
Clulow, V. (2005). Future dilemmas for marketers: can stakeholder
analysis add value? European Journal of Marketing, 39(9/10),
978–997.
Crosby, B. (1992). Stakeholder analysis: A vital tool for strategic managers. Washington: USAID.
Donaldson, T., & Preston, L. E. (1995). The stakeholder theory of the
corporation: concepts, evidence, and implications. The Academy of
Management Review, 20(1), 65–91.
Elias, A. A., Cavana, R. Y., & Jackson, L. S. (2002). Stakeholder analysis
for R&D project management. R&D Management, 32, 301–310.
Enserink, B., Hermans, L., Kwakkel, J., Thissen, W., Koppenjan, J., & Bots,
P. (2010). Policy analysis of multi-actor systems. The Hague: Lemma.
Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach.
Boston: Pitman.
Gibson, K. (2000). The moral basis of stakeholders theory. Journal of
Business Ethics, 26, 245–257.
Goodpaster, K. E. (1991). Business ethics and stakeholder analysis.
Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1), 9–12.
Grimble, R., & Wellard, K. (1997). Stakeholder methodologies in natural
resource management: a review of principles, contexts, experience
and opportunities. Agricultural Systems, 55(2), 173–193.
Gupta, A. (1995). A stakeholder analysis approach for interorganizational systems. Industrial Management and Data Systems,
95(6), 3–7.
Herder, P. M., & Stikkelman, R. M. (2004). Methanol-based industrial cluster design: a study of design options and the design
process. Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, 43 ,
3879–3885.
Herder, P. M., Bouwmans, I., Dijkema, G. P. J., Stikkelman, R. M.,
& Weijnen, M. P. C. (2008). Designing infrastructures using a
complex systems perspective. Journal of Design Research,
7 (1), 17–34.
Hummel, M., van Rossum, W., Verkerke, G. J., & Rakhorst, G.
(2002). Product design planning with the analytic hierarchy
process in inter-organizational networks. R&D Management,
32 (5), 451–458.
Kof, L. (2008). On the identification of goals in stakeholders’ dialogs. In:
B. Peach, & C. Martell (Eds.), Monterey workshop 2007, LNCS
5320 (pp. 161–181). Springer.
Luqi, & Kordon, F. (2008). Advance in requirements engineering: Bridging the gap between stakeholders’ needs and formal designs. In: B.
Peach, & C. Martell (Eds.), Monterey workshop 2007, LNCS 5320
(pp. 15–24). Springer.
Mason, R. O., & Mitroff, I. (1981). Challenging strategic planning
assumption. New York: Wiley.
Mitchell, R., Agle, B., & Wood, D. (1997). Towards a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and
what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–
886.
Pohl, K. (2010). Requirements engineering: Fundamentals, principles,
and techniques, 1st ed. Springer.
Polonsky, M. J. (1996). Stakeholder management and the stakeholder
matrix: potential strategic marketing tools. Journal of MarketFocused Management, 1 (3), 209–229.
Pouloudi, A., & Whitley, E. A. (1997). Stakeholder identification in
inter-organizational systems: gaining insights for drug use management systems. European Journal of Information Systems, 6 ,
1–14.
Preston, L. E., & Sapienza, H. J. (1990). Stakeholder management and
corporate performance. Journal of Behavioral Economics, 19(4),
361–375.
Ramírez, R. (1999). Stakeholder analysis and conflict management.
Cultivating peace: conflict and collaboration in natural resource
management (pp. 101–126).
Robertson, S. (2000). Requirements trawling: Techniques for discovering system requirements . London: The Atlantic System
Guild Ltd.
Sambamurthy, V., & Desanctis, G. (1990). An experiment evaluation of
GDSS effects on group performance during stakeholder analysis
(pp. 79–88). System Science, IEEE.
Sawyer, P., Gacitua, R., Stone, A. (2008). Profiling and tracing stakeholder needs. In: B. Peach, & C. Martell (Eds.), Monterey workshop
2007, LNCS 5320 (pp. 196–213). Springer.
Schmeer, K. (1999). Stakeholder analysis guidelines, policy toolkit for
strengthening health sector reform. World Bank.
Sharp, H., Finkelstein, A., Galal, G. (1999). Stakeholder identification in
the requirements engineering process, Workshop on Requirements
Engineering Process–DEXA’99, Italy (pp. 387–391).
Simmons, J., & Lovegrove, I. (2005). Bridging the conceptual divide:
lessons from stakeholder analysis. Journal of Organizational
Change Management, 18(5), 495–513.
Solaimani, S., & Bouwman, H. (2012). A framework for the alignment of
business model and business processes: a generic model for transsector innovation. Business Process Management Journal, 18(4),
655–679.
Solaimani, S., Bouwman, H., & Secomandi, F. (2013). Critical design
issues for the development of Smart Home technologies. Journal of
Design Research,11(1), 72–90.
Teruel, M. A., Navarro, E., López-Jaquero, V., Montero, F., González, P.
(2011). A comparative of goal-oriented approaches to modeling
S. Solaimani et al.
requirements for collaborative systems, 6th International Conference
on Evaluation of Novel Software Approaches to Software Engineering, Beijing, China.
Van Lamsweerde, A. (2001). Goal-oriented requirements engineering: A
guided tour, Proceedings 5th IEEE International Symposium on RE,
Toronto (pp. 249–263).
Varvasovszky, Z., & Brugha, R. (2000). How to do (or not to do)—a
stakeholder analysis. Health Policy and Planning, 15(3), 338–345.
Yu, E. (1997). Towards modelling and reasoning support for early-phase
requirements engineering. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Symposium of Requirements Engineering (pp. 226–235).
IEEE CS Press.