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WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE IN THE POLICY DIALOGUE PROCESS?
1 | STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
You want to make sure that the right people are involved in your Policy Dialogue process, especially those who have a vested interest in or are directly affected by the policy issue you have chosen. To work out who these individuals or groups of people might be, you will carry out some Stakeholder Mapping.
First, who is a stakeholder?
Any individual or organisation with ties to the policy issue you have chosen. The policy issue may directly affect their business or personal life, or this person or organisation may have the power to influence or change this policy issue even if it doesn’t directly affect them.
Here’s an example. If you were focusing on the release of microfibres from textiles into the ocean and how this affects your community, a few stakeholders may be: • Fishermen – microfibres impact the fish stocks and therefore their livelihoods.
• Local and international NGOs – particularly those focusing on marine issues. • National and local governments and specific governmental departments - e.g. the Department of
Environment.
• Washing machine producers and people managing sewage treatments. • The polluters themselves – fashion consumers (who may also be eating these same fish containing microfibres), fashion brands, manufacturers. • Fish and the ocean – just because they don’t have a voice, doesn’t mean they aren’t affected; perhaps you could involve a civil society organisation dedicated to their protection.
Why do you need to identify and engage with stakeholders?
During this Policy Dialogue, you will be engaging with different people who are affected by the topic, and we ask that you involve your stakeholders using a participatory approach.
Why do we want to use a participatory approach? In short, involving farmers, artisans, garment workers or others who may experience a sense of exclusion or exploitation helps them to become part of the solution. Furthermore, once people realise they are being listened to, they may feel empowered and have a greater sense of agency towards creating positive change. When those affected by an issue are given a voice and a way to meaningfully engage in decision-making, the policy design will be better informed, and the final policies will be more effective. Finally, bringing together all those affected will help to build mutual understanding, trust and credibility.
EXERCISE B
VISUALLY MAP OUT THE STAKEHOLDERS: Create a ‘mind-map’
You can just make a simple list if you wish, but we recommend creating a ‘mind-map’ to help you better visualise who the stakeholders are and how they relate and interact with one another. This should help you decide which stakeholders to prioritise when organising your Policy Dialogue process.
Alternatively, you can write a list of stakeholders and then map them and link them on a whiteboard or a large piece of paper (tip: write on sticky post-it notes which can be easily moved around) or use a free mapping tool such as VUE (https://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm), you can use the Worksheet 3 in the appendices.
Step-by-step instructions for
creating a ‘mind-map’(See Diagram 1)
1. To start, write your chosen topic in the centre of your page with several broad categories coming out from the centre. These categories could vary depending on your topic, but you could start with; international, national, regional, industry and local/community stakeholders. You can then can add extra categories if you want, such as government sectors, academia, consumers, producers etc. 2. Next, start to add stakeholders to your categories.
The categories are there to make sure you include all levels of stakeholders, so don’t worry too much what category they are in. It is often easiest to start at the local category and write any stakeholder down who is directly and often personally connected to the issue. This may include farmers, garment workers, artisan producers and other local people impacted by an environmental or social issue (and maybe even stakeholders such as animals and plants). 3. Then keep going to the next category. Look at the regional level – who is involved, affected or interested in the policy issue? For example, these could be local/regional NGOs, regional governments, factory managers and owners, trade unions, self-help groups, cooperative associations, local academic links (university academics involved in research) or small or local businesses.
4. Next look at the national level. Those with an interest could include; national government and specific government departments (e.g. environment, energy, health or business departments), large national companies and brands, national NGOs and trade unions.
5. Then look at the international community and think about who might have an interest. For example, intergovernmental organisations and programs (e.g
UN, International Labour Organisation, World Health
Organisation, UN Environment, World Business
Council on Sustainable Development, OECD, the
European Union, etc.) multinational corporations and brands, international NGOs (e.g. Greenpeace, WWF,
WaterAid, Oxfam, etc.), international trade unions (e.g.
IndustriALL). 6. Once you have all the stakeholders you can think of, it’s time to join the links between the stakeholders.
Think about:
• Which stakeholders work together already? • Who should be communicating with one another (but may not be)? • Which stakeholders could act as links between the local level and the regional level or the local level and national level or the national level and the international level and so on?
Top tips:
• Drawing the links with different colour pens can be a good way to visualise this. • Don’t be afraid to take your time on this exercise. It can be useful to discuss your
‘mind-map’ or your list of stakeholders with friends, colleagues or mentors to consider all aspects of the topic and who might be interested or affected by it. • Make sure you document and keep all the work you have done safe as you may need to refer back to it.
Diagram 1 An example ‘mind-map’ using general stakeholders (created using VUE). This ‘mind-map’ is just an example. You should create a format that is easiest for you to use and that you can refer back to later in the Dialogue. Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) e.g. UN, World Trade Organisation
International Fashion Consumers International Unions
International NGOs
Farmers International Corporations
INTERNATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
Departments within IGOs
National Branches of International NGOs
National NGOs Government Sectors
National Government
Animals and Plants Affected
Transportation Companies
INDUSTRIAL STAKEHOLDERS
Designers
LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS
Factories
Small Businesses
TOPIC
NATIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
National Unions
National Companies and Brands
REGIONAL STAKEHOLDERS
Local/Regional Government
Small NGOs
National Fashion Consumers
Garment Workers
Unions Local People Affected
Community Groups e.g. Religious Groups
Local Leaders Academic Institutions
Researchers
Students
National Companies With Sites in the Area
2 | UNDERSTANDING YOUR
STAKEHOLDERS
It is important to consider why your stakeholders will be interested, motivated and engaged in your chosen policy issue? Your stakeholders will have differing levels of interest, power and influence. Understanding your stakeholders’ needs and interests will be key to engaging them in your Policy Dialogue.
Understanding stakeholders’ interest
Different stakeholders will be connected to your issue in different ways. You need to think about why they would be interested in working with you, how you can make the topic a priority for them, and how they can benefit by being involved in your Policy Dialogue?
For example:
• Policymakers and government – Need a balance between caring about environmental and social issues but also prioritising the economy and what the public need. Priorities will change between political parties e.g. socialist, green or conservative parties. • Industry and businesses – Want to maximise profits, reduce risks and meet national/international requirements. However, some companies will have a higher interest in social and environmental issues.
Companies also care about what the consumer thinks as this drives their business. How will being involved benefit their business?
• Non-Governmental Organisations – Want to improve social and environmental problems yet need to meet the requirements of donors, investors and supporters. How can NGOs help you and what could you do for them? Contacts, resources, money, research, volunteers, anything else? • Supply chain workers, producers and local communities - Want a secure future for themselves and their family (job, income, health, education, etc.). They want to meet their ‘needs’ to survive and fulfil some ‘wants’.
• Public/consumers – Desire to have clothes which don’t have a negative environmental or social impact. However, they are often limited by cost, ease of finding such garments and social norms etc.
Understanding stakeholders’ power; which have more influence than others?
Individuals or groups of people will have different levels of power depending on their level of knowledge or expertise, how much money and resources they might have, how much they can influence policies, and their connections to other influential people.
Power is:
1. The ability to get what we want. 2. The ability to hold onto what we want. 3. The ability to shape events in the way that we want to shape them.
JOHN W GARDNER (ON LEADERSHIP, 1990)
EXERCISE C
This exercise will help you determine how much power each of your stakeholders holds and how interested they may be in getting involved.
When you have completed this exercise, you will be better able to understand which stakeholders hold the most influence, those who may present the biggest obstacles towards change and those who will be most likely to help achieve change.
You will also be able to identify which voices need to be better heard and how they could be included in your Policy Dialogue. For instance, within the fashion supply chain female garment workers are often said to be without much of a voice, as are those beyond the first tier of the supply chain – the farmers, those working in ginning, spinning, weaving and other processes beyond the regular scrutiny of brands in their audit process. However, whilst women working in garment factories may not have power, they certainly have valuable insights and an interest in seeing change happen. If women are able to get together in a group, such as a trade union, a worker participation committee or self-help group, they can exercise more power than they can as individuals.
Step-by-step instructions for creating a ‘Power vs Interest Matrix’
(See Diagram 2)
In this exercise, you will be organising your stakeholders by power and by interest. This will help you identify the stakeholders who are most likely to be able to help you, the stakeholders who need helping and those you should keep informed about what you are doing.
1. You will be plotting each of the stakeholders you identified in the previous ‘mind-map’ exercise. 2. As you look at the Matrix below, you will see that
‘power’ increases as you go up the Matrix and ‘interest’ increases as you go along the Matrix to the right. 3. Go ahead and plot each one of your stakeholders on the Matrix based on their individual interest in the policy issue and their power to make change. See the example in diagram 2. 4. After adding all of the stakeholders into the matrix, you could cross-reference your ‘mind-map’ and this
‘Power vs Index Matrix’ and annotate on the matrix how stakeholders may currently interact, which stakeholders could be brought together to form a group, where you can help empower stakeholders with high interest but low power and how best to engage with high power/low interest stakeholders.
Top tip:
Similar to the stakeholder mapping in exercise B, we have given you Worksheet 4 in the appendices, but please do this exercise in a way that suits you. Draw it on a whiteboard, use lots of colours, use sticky post-it notes or scribble it on a big piece of paper and don’t be afraid to make mistakes, cross things out and change things again and again. There are no wrong answers! But please remember to take photos of it so you can refer back at a later point.
Regional Local
International National
The Stakeholder Matrix.
Diagram 2
Example: Social and Environmental impact of pesticides
HIGH
International NGOs Health and Environmental NGOs e.g. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace
International agencies e.g. EC Directorate for Agriculture, Environment, Health; WHO, FAO National NGOs e.g. Pesticide Action Network, International
Soil Association Workers unions
Consumers Organic Farming organisations e.g. Better cotton, EOA-I, Fairtrade
National unions e.g. National Farmers Union
Health and safety agencies e.g. European Agecny for Safety and Health at Work
Large international
Pesticide and fertiliser Fashion brands manufacturers e.g. Monsanto National government departments for Environment and Health
Environmental agencies e.g. EA (UK) or EPA (US) Medium Fashion brands
National Media Local / Regional departments for environment and health Local NGOs Victims of pesticide exposure
Farm workers
Farmers associations Land owners
Small Fashion brands Rural residents
Scientists and researchers (toxicologists, environmental scientists) Doctors and hospitals
Local media
Seed and fertiliser suppliers Transport companies Garment factories
POWER
Environment and species affected
HIGH
INTEREST
LOW
EXERCISE D
EVALUATE YOUR STAKEHOLDERS
Ideally, you would want to involve, speak with or meet every one of the stakeholders you have identified in the ‘mindmap’ in exercise B and plotted in the ‘Stakeholder Power vs Interest Matrix’ in exercise C. If have you the time and capacity to reach out to everyone, that’s amazing!
However, in all likelihood you will not be able to include everyone, so you should try to think strategically about which stakeholders to prioritise. In this exercise, you will identify the stakeholders most affected by your issue as well as those who have the power to influence the relevant policies.
Try and narrow them down to around 5-15 stakeholder groups, with ideally with at least one stakeholder from each level (local, regional, national and international). To help you, look at your ‘Stakeholder Power vs. Interest Matrix’ in exercise C and consider the following questions:
1. How might some stakeholders become more powerful or become more interested?
• Focusing initially on stakeholders with high interest but low power, how can they become more empowered? For example, whilst an individual may not have much power themselves, they may have more power through a group or union where their interest has a bigger impact and their individual concerns may be given a voice • Who needs their voices heard most (their power increased)? 2. Do you have too many to cope with in any box (particularly top right)? • Whilst it is important to consider all stakeholders, dealing with many large, powerful organisations or governments may require a lot of work. 3. Who on the Matrix has both high power and high interest that you can engage with the most? • Out of the higher power stakeholders, who has the most interest in our issue and do we have any connections with them (potentially via other stakeholders)? 4. Think about who could link in well with your other stakeholders. Are there any existing ties at the community level, for example a local NGO who already works with a government department? • Which stakeholders may allow you to connect the stakeholders with lower power to stakeholders with higher power. Whilst all stakeholders are important, you want to use these questions to pick out the stakeholders that are most valuable to your Policy Dialogue. You might want to copy your mind-map and matrix and annotate them answering the questions above for all the stakeholders. Cross off stakeholders that you don’t think will be helpful. At the end, you should have 5-15 stakeholder groups left. If you have more, go through the questions again and really think carefully about the questions above and which stakeholder can contribute the most to the Policy Dialogue. The final stakeholders you choose will hopefully be your participants for your interviews, focus groups and workshops during the rest of the Policy Dialogue toolkit.
Top tip:
Before contacting any stakeholders later in the Dialogue, write down how you can get each stakeholder’s attention, interest, and potential ways they could help you. This will help you understand how much effort and time you need to invest to meet each stakeholders needs and engage them and therefore which stakeholders you should focus on. Also, explaining to the stakeholder how they can help you and why you have chosen them may help you gain their trust.
