Stakeholder 360TM
  

                          Social Capital, Sustainable Development, and the Corporation       espaņol

  
   by Robert Boutilier, Ph.D.
  
 
 
 
Assessing Network Needs
 
      
 
How does an organization actually measure the social capital in its stakeholder relationships? How can it decide what needs to change in order for sustainable community development to flourish?
 
Quite often the biggest barriers to sustainable development that benefits everyone are political. Network graphs of the social capital in stakeholder networks show any such barriers clearly. The Stakeholder 360 measures that social capital and provides templates to which the observed network can be matched.
 
     
     
         
 
 Matching observed network patterns to templates yields diagnoses and predictions about what kinds of barriers are likely to thwart sustainable development. Examples include self-serving elites in the stakeholder network, overly dependent stakeholders, and isolated stakeholders.
  
     
 
One of the most difficult barriers is the presence of  factions vying for power in a context of norm-enforcing institutions that are too weak to steer conflicts away from violence.
 
Matching observed patterns to templates also reveals opportunities for greater collaboration among stakeholders. The political essence of sustainable development is collaboration towards shared goals. The Stakeholder 360 collects information on goals and shows which stakeholders already have a common vision for the future.
  
         
TM "Stakeholder 360" is a registered trademark of 462347 BC Ltd.     (c) Copyright 2008 by 462347 BC Ltd