The war is over. The largest corporations in the world are now committed to sustainability. But, behind the public relations gloss, corporate executives and managers are perplexed. The majority of them have a genuine desire to work in an ethical and sustainable manner. Yet, when they engage with their stakeholders for that purpose, they unexpectedly encounter a world of hardball politics full of hostile activists, self-interested elites and unpredictable attacks. Unfortunately, corporate management is too often unskilled in this rough-and-tumble world. While managers rely on facts and rational analysis, their self-appointed critics have mastered the arts of political discourse, issue framing and media manipulation. At the same time, as corporations extend their global reach, their third-world stakeholder communities are beset with a variety of poverty-maintaining and sustainability-thwarting conditions. In many parts of the world, communities suffer from entrenched divisions, exclusion from power, unpredictable violence and economic dependency. In order to both reduce reputational risk and to contribute to sustainable development, companies need the equivalent of roadmaps of the socio-political terrain in their stakeholder networks.This book moves on to next challenge of giving companies what they need now: namely, "how to" guides addressing the twin problems of firstly maintaining political legitimacy (talking the talk), and, secondly, promoting sustainable development (walking the walk). They need to learn how to both play stakeholder politics and collaborate with stakeholders towards sustainability goals. Most companies have already encountered or anticipated the barriers that this book addresses, and managers will recognize the dilemmas described.Stakeholder Politics is the first book to offer a method for classifying and dealing with these socio-political problems.The book presents a typology of stakeholder networks that will help managers and community leaders identify and improve the social capital patterns in their own networks. Once they know what patterns they have, they can move their networks towards those that foster sustainable community development. The author describes vivid cases in which managers and community stakeholders have already used the approach successfully. At the same time, managers get handy tools for predicting and avoiding community-level socio-political risk around stakeholder issues: most notably, the Stakeholder 360 which has been successfully used in Canada and Australia with large groups of managers learning about stakeholder engagement.The book has been written for an audience of both managers and academics. Those working in developing countries with difficult stakeholder issues will find it indispensable.

This unique book combines a colourful history of Bolivian politics with some of the most advanced quantitative techniques yet developed for socio-political risk analysis. This is the story of how a foreign-owned private sector mining company (Minera San Cristobal - MSC) earned, lost, and regained its social licence to operate. Robert G. Boutilier and Ian Thomson, leading experts in stakeholder management theory and practice, transform the concept of the SLO from a metaphor to a management tool. The book traces the development of new concepts and measures in the field of stakeholder engagement while following the narrative of a community struggling with a fundamental change in its identity from a declining, malnourished llama-herding village to one of the richest towns in Bolivia. This remarkable story will inspire practitioners in the field of stakeholder management; it will provide an invaluable roadmap for professionals working on land re-use projects in the energy, mining, and conservation sectors; it will make stakeholder relations concepts and techniques accessible to students through an engaging and in-depth case study; and it will open your eyes to one of the most fascinating accounts of how two different cultures collided and then came together to address different but aligned goals.

This unique book combines a colourful history of Bolivian politics with some of the most advanced quantitative techniques yet developed for socio-political risk analysis. This is the story of how a foreign-owned private sector mining company (Minera San Cristobal - MSC) earned, lost, and regained its social licence to operate. Robert G. Boutilier and Ian Thomson, leading experts in stakeholder management theory and practice, transform the concept of the SLO from a metaphor to a management tool. The book traces the development of new concepts and measures in the field of stakeholder engagement while following the narrative of a community struggling with a fundamental change in its identity from a declining, malnourished llama-herding village to one of the richest towns in Bolivia. This remarkable story will inspire practitioners in the field of stakeholder management; it will provide an invaluable roadmap for professionals working on land re-use projects in the energy, mining, and conservation sectors; it will make stakeholder relations concepts and techniques accessible to students through an engaging and in-depth case study; and it will open your eyes to one of the most fascinating accounts of how two different cultures collided and then came together to address different but aligned goals.

This outstanding book offers you a fact-based strategy development process for managing issues and controversies.If you're a practitioner, it details how to ground your strategic advice on empirical research that reveals the sociopolitical dynamics of the issue. It is the first book to approach issues management from a blended application of advances in stakeholder theory and social network analysis. You'll learn how to track the sociopolitical environment in order to (a) avoid risks and crises, (b) obtain essential environmental scanning information for strategy development or adjustment, and (c) secure the organization's reputation and access to vital resources.The techniques described in this book have proven effective in issues management projects around the world. They work equally well whether the stakeholders are illiterate subsistence villagers or Internet savvy global activists.