Purpose

The need for stakeholder theory has been widely highlighted in the literature to develop solid strategies for a large organization. However, there is still a lack of user-friendly visualization tools and no unique approach exists to identify and engage stakeholders. This paper aims to propose a general methodology to co-design the sustainability ecosystem at the local scale, to explore it and to assess the impact of a large organization within the identified ecosystem.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology consists of two main processes: identifying an ontological map of the sustainability topics network and designing the local sustainability stakeholders ecosystem. Both processes are based on a nodes identification phase and a nodes prioritization phase. The identification phase was achieved by engaging 160 citizens, for the topics network and nearly 40 relevant stakeholders, for the stakeholders’ ecosystem, with a collaborative participatory mapping process. The prioritization phase was conducted because of three indicators, i.e. the closeness, the betweenness and the eigenvector centrality.

Findings

Betweenness centrality results to be the best indicator to assess the importance of a stakeholder with respect to the whole network, while eigenvector centrality highlights the quality of the already engaged stakeholders of an organization, as it mainly depends on the number of links of the first order neighbors. On the contrary, the closeness centrality, when applied to a small network, seems to be not appropriate to assess the centrality of a stakeholder.

Research limitations/implications

This approach revealed some criticalities in the mapping process, as in the weighting link procedure. Further investigations are needed to generalize the approach to a dynamic one, to allow real-time mapping and to develop a robust interconnection among centrality degrees and the power, interest and legitimacy concept of stakeholder theory.

Practical implications

Obtained results for a case study, i.e. the position of the University of Turin Green Office within the City of Turin sustainability ecosystem, are discussed showing how social network analysis centrality degrees can be used to quantitatively assess the role of an organization within a stakeholders’ ecosystem.

Social implications

Centrality analysis allows identifying emergent topics/stakeholders within a network of words/actors that, at a first sight, should not be considered by decision-makers and managers.

Originality/value

A new methodology for stakeholder identification and prioritization is proposed exploiting online data visualization tools, participatory mapping and social network analysis.

中文翻译：

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利益相关者生态系统的协同设计：通过将社交网络分析，利益相关者理论和参与式测绘联系起来的评估方法

目的

利益相关者理论的需求已在文献中被广泛强调，以为大型组织制定可靠的策略。但是，仍然缺少用户友好的可视化工具，并且不存在用于识别和吸引利益相关者的独特方法。本文旨在提出一种通用方法，以在本地范围内共同设计可持续性生态系统，进行探索并评估大型组织在已确定的生态系统中的影响。

设计/方法/方法

该方法包括两个主要过程：确定可持续性主题网络的本体图和设计本地可持续性利益相关者生态系统。这两个过程都基于节点标识阶段和节点优先级划分阶段。通过协作参与式映射过程，使主题网络的160位公民和利益相关者的生态系统的近40位相关利益相关者参与进来，从而完成了识别阶段。由于三个指标，即紧密度，中间度和特征向量中心度，因此进行了优先级划分阶段。

发现

中间性中心性结果是评估利益相关者相对于整个网络重要性的最佳指标，而特征向量中心性则突出了组织中已经参与的利益相关者的质量，因为它主要取决于一阶链接的数量。邻居。相反，当应用于小型网络时，接近中心性似乎不适合评估利益相关者的中心性。

研究局限/意义

这种方法揭示了映射过程中的一些关键，例如加权链接过程。需要进行进一步的研究以将这种方法推广到一种动态方法，以便进行实时映射，并在中心度与利益相关者理论的权力，兴趣和合法性概念之间建立稳固的联系。

实际影响

讨论了案例研究的结果，即都灵大学绿色办公室在都灵市可持续发展生态系统中的位置，讨论了如何使用社交网络分析中心度来定量评估组织在利益相关者生态系统中的作用。

社会影响

集中性分析允许在单词/演员网络中识别新兴主题/利益相关者，乍一看，决策者和管理者不应该考虑这些单词/演员。

创意/价值

提出了一种利用在线数据可视化工具，参与式映射和社交网络分析的利益相关者识别和优先级排序的新方法。