Role Performance and Stakeholder Strategies

Stakeholder expectations

Society is facing a multitude of very different stakeholder-related challenges such as the transition to a circular economy, the energy transition, climate adaptation, biodiversity loss and the nitrogen emissions crisis. Climate change is resulting in more frequent and longer hydrological extremes. In combination with contaminants from sources, this is causing problems with water availability.

For decades, smaller government was the guiding principle, with decentralisation from the state to municipalities, from government to society and from supply-driven to demand-driven policy. Recent years have seen a shift in this trend, with national management playing an increasingly important role in spatial planning. The provincial authorities, along with other stakeholders, are working to implement the national and cross-sector goals in the local and spatial context.

These developments are also reaching the water sector, which is increasingly faced with, but also wishes to contribute to, integrated area agendas. For example, where the water utilities used to be able to elaborate the source policy relatively independently, they now have to cooperate more with external parties because of factors such as limited freshwater availability and changing expectations in society about decision-making. This requires balancing different interests because different stakeholders want different roles in the different phases of area processes. So we need ways to repeatedly balance those interests properly and to make informed decisions about our own roles and stakeholder strategies.

By providing an insight into how roles are performed, this project helps drinking water utilities to get to grips better with these complex issues and the uncertainties involved. In that way, they can make conscious decisions about their role in a changing context and contribute to sustainability transitions without getting lost in the complexity that these transitions inherently entail.

Social learning with stakeholder managers

On the basis of an extensive literature review, a tool is being developed that allows stakeholder managers to formulate stakeholder strategies by making the role identity and context transparent on the basis of making different choices explicit. The developed tool is being discussed with stakeholder managers and tested in practice in four meetings with a learning group. These sessions involved joint reflection about the applicability and form of the tool, in addition to collecting insights about role performance from practice. On the basis of these reflections, two real-life cases will be selected in a joint process for further elaboration.

In these two cases, qualitative interviews will be used to map out ambiguities regarding the role of the water utility. This involves acquiring insights both inside and outside the utility. On the basis of these insights, an analysis will be made of how the role performance of water utility employees is shaped, orchestrated (intersubjectively) and/or selected. There will also be a review of the factors on which role performance depends and the extent to which they are context-specific (situational). 

Photo 1. Learning group participants test a first version of the stakeholder tool.

Defining the stakeholder strategy together

This project provides an insight into the origin and significance of theoretical concepts relating to role performance, and initiates a social learning pathway to enable the practical application of those concepts in the context of the drinking water sector. By clarifying the characteristics of role performance, reflecting on them with a group of professionals from practice, and testing the application in a learning group, practical tools can be developed together for use in practice. This project specifically targets professionals in stakeholder management (at drinking water utilities) who have to navigate a range of transitions in the contexts in which they work.