Legal and Ethics

Stakeholdes are people who hold a stake or some share in a certain company, system or an issue. The analysis of stakeholders is a way of discerning a company or the system itself, wherein areas such as power, objectives, aims, position and relationships can be looked into. An analysis of these stakeholders will show a pattern of communication, conflict and understanding between these shareholders. This will help in resolving any differences and issues.
According to ICRA these are different types of stakeholders,
·    Key stakeholder. Are those stakeholders who have a great influence over the project and its success involved.

·    Primary stakeholder. Are those stakeholders who are direct beneficiaries of the results and the of the project.
·   Secondary stakeholder. Are those stakeholders who act as “intermediaries” inside a project or a system.
·  Active stakeholders. These stakeholders directly affect or may even determine decisions and actions in a project or a system.
·   Passive stakeholders. These are stakeholders who are directly affected by any decions and actions taken by the others.
·  Important stakeholders. These stakeholders are very important to the project itself. Their needs are of high signifcance.
·   Influential stakeholders. These are stakeholders who have the influence or the power to make decions regarding an activity or who can convince others in making a decion.
Any ethical obligations to the stakeholder can be easily balanced by offereing them substantial roles of responisibility. According to Bittner and Spence (2002), you need to identify the type of stakeholder for the kind of role. These roles can be that of ambassadors (Key/Influential/Important stakeholders), advisors (Active/Primary stakeholders), visionaries (Active), executive sponsors (Passive stakeholders) marketeers (Passive/Secondary stakeholders) or standard users (Secondary stakeholders). These roles can be interchangable depending on the responsibility that is involved and the influence that the stakeholder has in the project or the system.
According to Robertson (2000), the first step would be to identidy the requiremnts and inturn to identify the stakeholders. Next step would be to recognize the kind of role they plan to play in the project along with their level of involvemnt and commitment to the project. This will very well enable us to understand any conflicts that arise and help us to comeup with any resolutions for it.
Stakeholders are very important people irrespective of the kind of role they play. All need to be respected and taken care of equally so that the project does not suffer in the long run but instead benefits with the experience and idealogies of such capable and able people.
References
ICRA. ICRA Learning Materials – Stakeholders – Key Concepts.
Bittner, K, Spence, I (2002). Use Case Modeling. Addison-Wesley
Professional. System design
Robertson. S (2000). Project Sociology:Identifying and involving the stakeholders. The Atlantic Systems Guild Ltd