[governance] re: stakeholder

[Mawaki Chango]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:

>
>
> On 28-Jul-14 17:19, Deirdre Williams wrote:
>
> > Responding to Ian's reminder, and to the discussion generally - what
> >  is a stake? who holds one? how/why do they hold it?
>
> Sometime a word is just a word.
>
> All words have many uses and definitions, and yes, the old origin of the
> word was someone who held the stakes (wagers) in a bet.  The usage I
> tend toward (though I am sure i could quibble over the words, but it
> comes close, come from project management.
>
> This one is from
> <http://www.projectmanagementdocs.com/blog/what-is-a-stakeholder.html>
>
> but it is only one of a many similar reference that can be found.
>
> > " Loosely defined, a stakeholder is a person or group of people who
> > can affect or be affected by a given project. Stakeholders can be
> > individuals working on a project, groups of people or organizations,
> > or even segments of a population. A stakeholder may be actively
> > involved in a project's work, affected by the project's outcome, or
> > in a position to affect the project's success. "
>
>
> In this case the project is the Internet, its health as an open and
> global resource including its extension beyond the digital divide to all
> the world's people.
>
> It would probably be a good idea to specialize the definition for use in
> Ig discussions,


+1
The problem, as I see it, is not the definition of the basic concept that
is at the center of the complex problem we're dealing with, as much as it
is the challenges that pertain to its operationalization.

First of all, we have _multi_ stakeholders -- How do we identify them? Who
get to identify them? What are the requirements to be a stakeholder? How do
we make sure that those requirements are not being excessively
disadvantageous to some while being exclusively advantageous to some others?

Secondly, I note that "individuals" are pretty much present in the
definition being borrowed from project management. But how do we scale that
up for a global resource/project? Where are the individuals in "our" brand
of multistakeholderism? At this point, one can argue that the notion of
"democratic stakeholder" does a better job at clarity -- it is the
individual citizen (even if many of them may form groups that find more or
less interest in this or that outcome resulting from the participation of
the individuals.) We know the stakeholder grouping has been one of the
major source of concerns and contention, particularly in terms of their
varied levels of influence.

The problem with multistakeholderism will not be resolved until the
question of the relation(ship) between stakeholders, in terms of their
influence on the process, is addressed satisfactorily to most people. Since
we always be told that it is voluntary to become stakeholder but it is the
way and manner in which every and all stakeholders --assuming all have the
same ease of access and they invest equal attention into the process-- are
listened to, heard and responded to that will make all the difference.

Mawaki



> but that is the general idea I have in mind when I use it.
>
> And in all of this, I can only speak for my understandings.
>
> avri
>
>
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