Evidence from Stakeholders Flashcards
(14 cards)
Example of where Stakeholder Evidence heavily impacted decision-making
KLM (2016).Decided to assign one fewer flight attendant in economy class on 40% of its long-haul flights. They thought this would improve productivity, but the flight attendants felt that reducing the number of crew members would increase their workload significantly. This could spiral into customer service problems. So, the crew members went on strike which cost the company 10 million dollars. They then reached an agreement. Flight attendants got 3.5% increase and the reduction in staff was cancelled.
Evidence from Stakeholders
Pertains to both ethical and practical considerations. Practical considerations arise from stakeholders’ level of power and interest. Ethical considerations arise from the distribution of a decision’s potential harms relative to its benefits.
Not necessarily about reliability and validity of the evidence, but rather the critical appraisal focuses on whether stakeholder evidence accurately represents the feelings and perceptions of all stakeholders in that group.
Not all Evidence from Stakeholders is Stakeholder Evidence
Sometimes evidence from stakeholders actually represents organisational data or practitioner judgement.
Stakeholder evidence- stakeholders’ values, preferences, concerns and perceptions about how a decision may affect them. KLM Example.
Organisational Evidence- factual, objectifiable information about how the organisation functions. Theranos Fraud Case Study. Mismatch between claims and reality. Claimed its technology could accurately test for diseases, but in reality internal testing, whistleblower reports and audits showed that the technology was unreliable. Results were often produced using third-party machines. Internal warnings were ignored. Employees and scientists raised concerns about inaccuracy of test results. Leadership ignored and suppressed this information.
Practitioner Evidence- professional judgements or insights based on experience and expertise. The Beatle’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band (1967). Decided to stop touring, due to first hand experience from the Beatles of poor sound quality at live venues, difficult musical performances. Professional judgement- they concluded that continuing the tour would be unsustainable creatively and personally. They judged that they would prefer to experiment with the studio as an instrument. Based on their expert, intuitive judgement.
The source of evidence does not determine the type of evidence, but rather the content and purpose of the information do.
Direct v Indirect Stakeholders
Whether a decision has a direct impact on stakeholder’s interests or an indirect impact through the actions of other stakeholder groups.
Stakeholder Map
Useful tool to overcome the decision maker’s biased consideration of a decision’s implications for other people.
Primary v Secondary Stakeholders
Based on company’s responsibility towards the stakeholder. Current employees, customers and suppliers are primary stakeholders, whereas future employees, regulators and local community are secondary stakeholders.
Who are the most relevant stakeholders?
Relevance is determined by:
- Extent to which the stakeholder’s interests are affected by the decision
- Extent to which the stakeholder can affect the decision (power to influence)
How to acquire evidence from stakeholders?
You can acquire evidence from stakeholders in many ways.
Quantitative methods- quantifies perceptions and feelings.
Qualitative methods- more in depth, detailed.
Focus Groups- but biases can occur like conformity bias.
Importance of Subjective Feelings and Perceptions
Thomas Theorem- what people feel and perceive to be true constitutes a social fact that has an actual effect on them, whether these feelings and perceptions are true or not. Tends to improve long term decision quality, as well as short term.
Practical Relevance in Appraisal of Stakeholder Evidence
Powerful and influential group of stakeholders perceive a decision as unfavourable- serious practical ramificiations.
Ethical Relevance in Appraisal
Goldman Sachs case study demonstrates the importance.
Representativeness
How well the data obtained regarding stakeholder perspectives accurately represents all stakeholders on a particular group or category. The more representative the sample, the more sure we can be about generalisability.
