How to involve stakeholders?

Strategy management is a process that requires the ability to manage change (Ketchen, 2012, page 38). This essay is about the role of internal and external stakeholders in project management. This explains why it’s important to involve and to communicate.
Keywords: Internal & exernal factors, Strategic Management, Decision-making process, Transparency.

We leverage the example of a school which wants to consolidate classes to save on teachers’ wages. We first list the stakeholders and their arguments. We then explain how we integrate the different stakeholders into the strategic management process. Last, we propose a solution that seems optimal.
Stakeholders review and main arguments

First of all, there are four internal stakeholders: 1) pupils. While they won’t benefit from lower taxes unless their parents somehow reinvest the savings into extra activity (cultural, sportive or private teacher), they would be directly impacted by classes’ consolidation. Indeed, this means less focus from the teacher and less time for individual coaching.; 2) teachers. This would mean more complexity to properly manage their classroom and less time to personalize coaching. Losing one teacher would probably result in extra workload to handle the non-teaching tasks (e.g. school projects). All in all, this could lead to less motivation and lower retention (Ratcliffe, 2017). We assume that there is no room for increasing wages of teachers; 3) non-teaching staff. They often play an active role in school management (catering, nurse, maintenance, teacher’s assistant) and contribute to the development of children. They also enable teachers to focus on teaching. They would fear for their job too; and 4) the school’s director. S/he would be impacted as there is a need to handle change and unsatisfaction from internal stakeholders This might also require extra work to handle external stakeholders (parents’ representative, city council…) and less focus on core work.

Besides, there are five external stakeholders: 1) Pupils’ parents and their representative: While they would probably bless paying less income, they would hardly compromise on teaching quality and would probably be skeptical about the quantity of kids per classroom, 2) Representatives of the city council (in charge of education). They probably need to deliver the promise they made of reducing local taxes. They would downplay the impact of class consolidation and would bring benchmark from other cities. However, fewer classrooms or perceived lower quality of teaching would make the city less attractive to settle in; 3) Local representative of ministry of Education. The education system is different from one country to another. In my country, the State - the ministry of Education - is the accountable body and assigns district managers, who make final decisions about the opening or closing of a classroom. The district manager would need to answer objections from the city, from the parent’s representative and from the school’s director and bring counter-arguments. While the State may be interested in reducing taxes, its direct

responsibility is not on local taxes; 4) Tax payers. Any local tax saving may be good news at first glance for inhabitants, especially for those who have no kids attending this specific school, and 5) other local schools. They are indirect stakeholders. They might provide less crowded classrooms and be attractive for parents who worry about pedagogic quality. This brings competitiveness between schools and may amplify the variation of number of pupils per school / classroom. A local school would be pleased to welcome a few extra kids to consolidate classes, especially if one classroom is at stake.
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Management Process

We would assign a team to set the diagnosis on class consolidation and its impact. This team would involve parents’ representative, school director, teachers’ representative and non-teaching staff’s representative. They would work together to gather data, to handle break out by age brining projection for coming years. This team would handle the topic from different viewpoints (pupils, teacher, non-teaching staff, parents, school director). The output would consist in sharing diagnosis with the steering committee.
The steering committee would have quarterly meetings as per the operational rhythm of local schools. It gathers parents’ representatives, teachers, school director, spokesperson of non-teaching staff, representative of city hall, district representative of the Ministry of Education. The output of the team would be presented and discussed. Broader perspective at city and district level would be brought, together with new arguments or thresholds. Timelines would be shared. Minutes of the meeting would be mailed to parents. Parents’ representative may put higher pressure on city council or district representative of the Ministry of Education through specific actions to demonstrate their satisfaction.

This is why it’s important to assign a second team to work on solutions or scenario planning. What would be the organization if one classroom was to be discontinued? How could the school deliver savings without closing a classroom? This could be done by postponing renovation investments or by further sharing non-teaching staff or by negotiating better costs for catering. This should involve local schools’ directors and a broader team from the city council to get the full picture. The output would be shared in the next quarterly steering committee and conclusions would be sent out to the district representative of the Ministry of Education and all stakeholders would be informed. In my home country, s/he would be the final decision maker and would value the efforts made to screen different scenario and to come with impact study.

Recommendation & conclusion

In my view, we can’t compromise on education. The quality of the educational system is a major driver of attractiveness. Nevertheless, I would strongly value the data-driven output of the two teams. Whichever final decision is made, I would consider that efforts have been made on the right thing by involving all stakeholders (Business Stakeholders: Internal and External, n.a..).

References:

Business Stakeholders: Internal and External. (n.a..). Retrieved from:
http://oer2go.org/mods/en-boundless/www.boundless.com/accounting/textbooks/boundless-accounting-textbook/introduction-to-accounting-1/overview-of-key-elements-of-the-business-19/business-stakeholders-internal-and-external-117-6595/index.html
Ketchen, D & Short, J. (2012) Strategic Management: Evaluation and Execution. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license.
Ratcliffe, R. (Jan 31, 2017). The reality of budget cuts in schools – survey. Retrieved from:
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/jan/31/the-reality-of-budget-cuts-in-schools-survey