A Guide for Stakeholder Analysis in IS/IT Management and Research: The Case of Broadband Availability in Rural North Carolina

Abstract

Stakeholder analysis is a methodology that can provide valuable insights about a phenomenon. Information systems and information technology researchers have utilized stakeholder analysis to understand and learn from successes, failures, and other aspects of IS/IT initiatives. In this tutorial, we provide guidelines for conducting a stakeholder analysis currently missing in the IS/IT discipline despite being repeatedly called for. We reviewed studies on stakeholder analysis within IS/IT first, but found that there was not sufficient coverage. Then we went outside the discipline and found relevant studies in the areas of organizational and strategic management and public policy. Our analysis, then, consists of a review and a combination of the findings of studies from within the IS/IT discipline and studies in organizational and strategic management and public policy. Our guidelines start with determining who the stakeholders are related to a phenomenon and what key concerns these stakeholders have about the phenomenon. In the next step, we relate stakeholders to one another and across the key concerns and point out how to identify possible coalitions. Last, we describe how to apply these findings to determine strategies for managing stakeholders or building theory around a phenomenon and its concerns. These final steps can be used to make policy recommendations, provide guidance for IS/IT-related initiatives, or present constructs and relationships that can be tested by future researchers. We demonstrate the applicability of our guidelines with a case study about broadband availability in rural North Carolina.