Thesis advisor: Lauren Saenz / Stakeholder involvement is widely acknowledged to be an important aspect of program evaluation (Mertens, 2007; Greene, 2005a; Brandon, 1998). However, limited work has been done to empirically study evaluators’ practices of stakeholder involvement and ways in which stakeholder involvement is affected or guided by various factors. As evaluators interact with and place value on the input of stakeholders, social, cultural, and historical backgrounds will always be infused into the context (Mertens & Wilson, 2012; MacNeil, 2005). The field of evaluation has done little to critically examine how such contexts impact evaluators’ perceptions of stakeholders and their involvement. The present study attempts to fill these gaps, focusing specifically on the relationships among evaluator identities and characteristics, evaluation models, and stakeholder involvement. Using the frameworks of critical evaluation theory (Freeman & Vasconcelos, 2010) and a theory of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), the present study utilized a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach. A sample of 272 practicing program evaluators from the United States and Canada provided quantitative survey data, while a sample of nine evaluators provided focus group and interview data. Regression analyses and thematic content analyses were conducted. Findings from the quantitative strand included relationships between: (1) measures of individualism-collectivism and stakeholder involvement outcomes, (2) contextual evaluation variables and stakeholder involvement outcomes, (3) use of use, values or social justice branch evaluation models and stakeholder involvement outcomes, and (4) whether the evaluator identified as a person of color and the diversity of involved stakeholders. Findings from the qualitative strand demonstrated the role of dominant frameworks of evaluation serving to perpetuate systems of power. Participating evaluators revealed ways in which they feel and experience systems of power acting on them, including participation in, recognition of, and responses to oppression. The qualitative strand showed that evaluation models may be used to help recognize power dynamics, but that they are also used to reinforce existing power dynamics. Implications and recommended directions for future research are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.

This dissertation presents the findings of an exploratory collective case-study examining corporate innovations arising from voluntary dyadic engagement between UK firms and nonprofit organisations (NPOs) focused on social issues. Whilst the extant literature demonstrates that pro-active engagement with NPOs can assist firms innovate, there has been no empirical work which explores the relationship between the engagement and the innovation outcome: a gap which this research addresses. In doing so, it illustrates how concepts and constructs from the innovation management literature can be applied usefully to the stakeholder and cross-sector collaboration field. To date, empirical studies addressing firm-NPO engagements have concentrated overwhelmingly on partnerships to address environmental issues. This study provides insights into cross-sector engagements focused on addressing social issues. Using a form of analytic induction to evaluate qualitative case-data from ten dyadic engagements, this dissertation addresses the question: “how do firms innovate through engagement with social issues nonprofit organisations?” The research found that product and service innovations resulted from engagements where the firm had an external stakeholder orientation and was focused on delivering tangible demonstrations of corporate responsibility. Process innovations, by contrast, were produced from engagements where firms had an internal stakeholder orientation. Two distinctions were noted in the innovation process, too. Firstly, a more exploratory approach to dyadic engagement activities, which resulted in an emergent innovation process; and secondly, a focused and pre-determined search activity to exploit the resources of the nonprofit partner which demonstrated a more planned innovation process. In addition, two distinct boundary spanning roles were identified: in dyads with no direct management involvement in the engagement, the role was associated with formal responsibilities from senior management to „manage‟ innovation opportunities and outcomes. In dyads where senior management were involved, there was no such formality; the boundary spanner acted to „facilitate‟ search and exploration to locate opportunities for innovation through idea exchange. The application of innovation constructs to the business and society field has enabled firm engagement with nonprofit stakeholders to be examined through a new lens and demonstrated how firms innovate from such relationships. In particular it has highlighted the key role played by the firm boundary spanner (relationship manager) and how this role alters depending on senior management involvement: a distinction which has not been made in the extant literature and would benefit from further examination.

9 pp. / The Using Watershed Assessments to Inform Planning for Rural Watersheds publication provides a process for developing a baseline watershed assessment. In this guide we provide recommendations for engaging with stakeholders to assess natural resource conditions, as well as basic information to collect to create a baseline assessment. Watershed planning is not a simple, quick process. This guide addresses just the first steps of building a watershed assessment– understanding the current conditions and issues facing your watershed. Beyond the watershed assessment phase is the hard work of utilizing the information from the assessment, along with the results of additional stakeholder feedback, to develop an actual watershed plan. This guide provides an outline of how to complete the watershed assessment portion of your watershed planning effort, but does not provide a detailed step-by-step process. Rather, this document is intended as a resource to help guide you in your efforts by providing suggestions based on real-world watershed planning experience.

The Kootenay Region of British Columbia is an important landscape connection for wildlife diversity in the Yellowstone to Yukon ecoregional corridor. Significant conservation efforts have provided substantial areas designated to protect wildlife ecosystems in this area. Yet climate change and on-going human development threaten the future resilience of these ecosystems. In light of this complex problem, the goal of this dissertation is to evaluate the effectiveness of current wildlife conservation policy mechanisms, their potential vulnerability in the face of climate change, and the motivation of stakeholders to support policy adaptations. In particular, the research undertakes to understand how community support for adaptation strategies that mitigate climate change impacts on wildlife ecosystems may evolve through direct engagement in conservation assessment and design processes. The thesis therefore addresses the overarching question: “How does stakeholder engagement in an assessment of climate change impacts on wildlife ecosystems influence support for appropriate wildlife habitat and species intervention policies?” The dissertation reviews conservation policies applicable to British Columbia, reviews the efficacy of how those policies are implemented in the Kootenay Region, assesses the potential scope of ecosystem vulnerability to climate change in the region, and evaluates how stakeholder values, beliefs and attitudes motivate support for wildlife conservation and how this is influenced by engaging in a workshop that explores scenarios and impacts of climate change. The efficacy of current conservation policies was evaluated against ecosystem representation, objectives from the Kootenay-Boundary Land Use Plan, the recent ecoregional assessment for the Canadian Rocky Mountains prepared by the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the Mountain Caribou Recovery Plan, conservation of habitat for Grizzly bears, fisher, lynx, wolverine and wolves, and recent conservation proposals. The potential for climate change impacts was assessed by modelling future ecosystem and wildlife habitat change scenarios. Finally, stakeholder motivation was evaluated by engaging a group of selected participants in a process involving a preliminary survey, attending a one-day workshop, and one-on-one interviews. Broadly, the research found that 1) that although the Kootenay Region has conservation policies in place that provide substantive protection for ecosystems and wildlife habitat, such policies were not designed to accommodate climate change impacts, and 2) value-based conflicts and institutional shortcomings are barriers to policy reform needed to address resilience in the context of climate change. Perspectives on a conservation design process explicitly addressing the tensions inherent in socio-ecological systems are offered as a framework for considering policy reforms required to contend with climate change impacts on wildlife conservation. / Graduate

Over recent decades, the stakeholder arena for urban flood management has become well recognised as being complex and dynamic. Various stakeholders are involved before, during and after a flooding event, all of which have different interests and demands. Therefore, an initial stakeholder identification and analysis stage is required before detailed stakeholder engagement strategies can be developed and employed. Drawing on urban flood management in Zhuji, a typical medium-sized city that has suffered urban flooding in China, this research project used a mixed-method research methodology within a single case-study approach to explore the current stakeholder arena for urban flood management in a medium-sized Chinese city. By combining stakeholder salience analysis with social network analysis, this study tries to create a more nuanced insight into the stakeholder arena, so that stakeholder participation in urban flood management can be improved. This thesis produces several findings. First, it provides empirical evidence to show that traditional one-dimensional stakeholder analysis methods such as the level of interest and influence; cooperation and competition; cooperation and threat; and stakeholder interest and power cannot provide an in-depth understanding of a complex and dynamic stakeholder arena, as exists for urban flood management. By way of contrast, the proposed stakeholder analysis approach, which combines both stakeholder salience and network analyses, can create a multi-dimensional understanding of urban flood management stakeholders and allows the initial problem space to be recast into a more detailed or nuanced understanding of the problems presented. This improved understanding of the stakeholder arena and the related problem space provides a more solid information foundation upon which new stakeholder and community engagement practices can be developed. Second, this thesis argues that the Mitchell et al. (1997) salience model experiences limitations in practice. Only five of the seven salience groups were identified in the present research project, with both the Dangerous and Demanding stakeholder groups missing. This indicates that the identification of urban flood management stakeholders in a medium-sized Chinese city is highly dependent on their legitimate claims. Third, the social network analysis used in this project not only explores the relationships between stakeholders, but also provides an opportunity to present other one-dimensional stakeholder attitudes. This enhancement of the data beyond one-dimensional visual representations to dynamic and interactive processes not only better assists policy-makers in developing new and improved engagement practices, it also allows engagement practitioners to educate stakeholders and interactively improve understanding of the situation among those stakeholders. This understanding, in turn, is assumed to facilitate collaborative problem solving.

Stakeholders are considered to be one of the key drivers for any construction project. On the other hand, the performance of construction projects is primarily driven by sustainability-related targets. Hence, there is a need for a systematic approach to engage the stakeholders, as part of the Project Management process, to achieve the construction sustainability. This research focused on stakeholder engagement with the aim to improve the construction project performance through achieving construction sustainability. A framework is developed which integrates stakeholders with sustainability driven project performance. This research performs an empirical investigation through mixed-method research as the appropriate research technique. Data collection of this research is carried out in two stages. A series of semi structured interviews were carried out with 16 experienced UK construction professionals. Prior literature were used to design the interview questions about different issues related to the stakeholder engagement, construction sustainability and construction project performance. The aim of the interview is to investigate the current issues and practices of the construction projects are facing relating to engaging stakeholder to make the construction sustainable to improve the construction project performance. Some of the hypotheses are generated relating to the findings from the interviews and literature reviews. After analysing the interviews, a questionnaire is designed based on the findings from the interviews. Questionnaires were mailed to 500 UK construction companies and 233 (46 per cent) responses were received. The aim of this survey is to find out a structured and appropriate methodology to accomplish the requirements of making the construction sector more sustainable by improving its performance. Typically, questionnaires will be used to get the participants opinion in order to produce data to follow. These data will be used to test the hypothesis. These two approaches were adopted to align the participant’s opinions and beliefs and to develop jointly acceptable strategies with agreed long-term, sustainable solutions. Statistical Package for Social Science [SPSS] is selected and used to analyse the questionnaire responses. Correlation analysis revealed that the extent of the impact of stakeholder engagement to achieve the construction sustainability and improving the construction project performance. ANOVA revealed the variation of the perception of participant’s roles and companies’ strategic focuses towards the stakeholder’s engagement, construction sustainability and construction project performance. In essence, adhering to the various levels of implementation presented will ensure that construction sector can derive the maximum benefit from stakeholder engagement and that the decision-making process and the actions regarded as critical are taken into consideration. Based on the findings from the interview and questionnaire survey a conceptual framework is set out that underline the preparation and presentation of stakeholder engagement to improve the construction project performance through achieving construction sustainability. This derived framework demonstrates that such engagement can be valuable in anticipating the expectations of the different stakeholders from the projects, which may impact on behaviour. Finally, this research provides recommendations from both a theoretical and practical point of view to improve the stakeholder’s impact on construction sustainability and construction project performance.

The world is facing a 'perfect storm' of socio-ecological crises: adverse climate change, natural resource depletion, water conflict, to name but a few. With many of these future pressures looming, it is essential to learn how to shift from traditional command-and-control strategies to more adaptive ones. Adaptive governance is an approach from institutional theory that combines ecological systems theory, natural resource management and the study of self-governing institutions to manage common pool resources. The Dark Peak of the Peak District National Park is one of the UK’s largest carbon stores, fraught with a history of frequent change in policies and land management activities, conflicting knowledges and interests, convoluted property rights regimes, and carbon emissions. The recent development of a carbon agenda made it an excellent example to explore how this restructures the Dark Peak social network, how its key stakeholders adopt and respond to it, and finally how an adaptive framework can facilitate in mitigating carbon emissions. This thesis offers the first analysis of the Dark Peak’s social network managing for a carbon agenda, and also provides a critical reflection on the possibilities and limitations of using an adaptive framework in this particular context. This has been achieved by combining social network analysis, with stakeholder mapping, observation, and semi-structured interviews to identify the key stakeholders steering the Dark Peak’s carbon agenda.

As the King III code has been described as the future of corporate governance the question has to be asked whether corporate South Africa is able to translate this international best practice document into best practice implementation. The purpose of this research was to assess how companies and industry experts have interpreted the requirements of King III – Governing Stakeholder Relationships – and to see if there was a change in focus by companies and their boards ‘to stakeholder engagement and reputation management’. Through qualitative interviews the objective of the research was to: • find out to what extent companies had adopted the recommendations on governing stakeholder relationship (King III); • confer with industry experts as to what companies are expected to report on when they adopt King III principles on governing stakeholder relationships; and • ascertain if there was a common understanding of the adoption of King III – Governing Stakeholder Relationships – from a company and industry perspective? For business leaders who have accepted that the sustainability of the system depends on delivering wealth creation and economic return for shareholders and stakeholders, sustainably and responsibly and who have placed stakeholder trust at the heart of their companies’ strategy adopting governing stakeholder relationship – governance element eight – recommendations is in synch. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Yes / Social media provides a significant avenue for stakeholder engagement which is crucial to ensure loyalty and satisfaction of stakeholders who possess valuable resources that can influence the business outcomes. Container lines – imperative members of global supply chains and facilitators of international trade – utilize social media to engage their stakeholders due to environmental and commercial complexity of their business. However, not all social media posts generate the same amount of stakeholder engagement. This study aims to identify and examine the social media post characteristics that lead to higher stakeholder engagement in the container shipping market. The study applies Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection method to categorize social media posts based on their engagement levels. The analysis is conducted on the tweets of four global container lines which are posted between 1 September 2018 and 31 January 2019. The results demonstrate that social media posts of container lines have varying effects on engagement level. We found that fluency of tweets, tangibility of company resources in the tweet, vividness level, content type, existence of a link, and existence of a call-to-action significantly influence the container lines’ stakeholder engagement rate. This study is the first that finds out social media post classes based on the interaction between their characteristics and engagement rates by employing a decision tree methodology. The results are expected to help container lines in their social media management and stakeholder engagement policies.

A First Year Writing program is an academic unit that manages the curriculum, budget, teaching faculty, and other aspects of writing classes for first year students as part of a university's general education curriculum. Throughout their daily tasks, the directors of these programs must work with the requirements of their institution, must build relationships with their administrators and campus stakeholders, and must work within the mission and values of their institution. However, as higher education becomes increasingly corporatized, these institutional constraints are sometimes at odds with the research, best practices, and theories of language and learning that these program administrators know and use. In this dissertation, I explore the way these differences in institutional situation and research-based practice affect the writing program. After outlining the way these inputs interact within the writing program and create a condition of tension, I locate the specific strategies of Requesting, Enriching, Learning, Showcasing, Collaborating, and Aligning as value-based forms of action that program administrators take to navigate this tension in positive ways / Ph. D.