Chapter 17

Stakeholder participation is critical to effectively communicating risk and maintaining organization and source credibility. The authors stated best when they wrote “having the audience or stakeholders interact directly with those who are communicating ……the risk can be extremely effective way to communicate the risk.

Accordingly one must keep in mind when attempting to utilize effective stakeholder participation, is that the stakeholder participation is most effective when key choices concerning the risk have yet to be made. This gives the appearance of good faith by the communicating parties.

Requirements for stakeholder participation

The authors emphasized that the communicating organization must be comfortable with the way or methods by which it interacts with the stakeholders and vice versa.

The author also state that in order for stakeholder participation to truly work the organization must be truly committed to the plan. The best way is to maintain with all active organizational participants that stakeholders have a right to be involved.

Some keys to implementing the plan:

it is important to gauge stakeholders’ perceptions
essential to the plan is to find consensus with all groups/parties involved
work to prevent conflicts so the plan maybe implemented


Types of participation

The Formal Hearing – be sure the time and place has no pervious association with negative events or sentiments.

Self Help Groups -- motivates stakeholders of potentially risky behavior, also informs them of the preventative actions they can employ.

Focus Groups – stakeholders’ representatives who meet for a specific purpose, for a specific period of time.

Workshops – similar to focus groups, the nature of the workshop is more educational than participatory.

Advisory Groups – made up of stakeholder representatives who advise the organization about concerns, over a variety of subjects over an extended period of time.

These are essential instruments to be used in stakeholder participation.