Stakeholder Management: Duties and Responsibilities

In the realm of project management and business operations, effective Stakeholder Management stands as a linchpin. Failing to understand and engage Stakeholders can lead to project delays, budget overruns, and even failure. Thus, understanding the key Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities can help navigate these challenges and ensure project success.

Stakeholder management is the practice of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing relationships with internal and external stakeholders who are directly affected by the outcome of a venture or project. According to Pulse of the Profession (PMI) 2021, 63% of companies have already integrated stakeholder engagement strategies. After all, it enables a deep understanding of stakeholders by establishing trust and strengthening interpersonal communication. Thereby ensuring that all stakeholders have a shared, similar understanding of the organization’s key goals and work together to fulfill these objectives.

So, as we have established, stakeholder management is just as important for large corporations as it is for small businesses or even not-for-profit organizations.

What is a Stakeholder?

A Stakeholder is an individual, group, or entity with a vested interest in a project, organisation, or business. They can significantly impact or be impacted by the outcomes and decisions related to the project or business. They often have diverse interests, needs, and perspectives. Their involvement can range from financial investments to regulatory concerns.

Types of Stakeholders

Stakeholders can be broadly classified into two primary categories, each of which holds a crucial role in influencing project and business outcomes.

Internal Stakeholders

Internal Stakeholders are generally individuals or groups within the organisation who are directly involved in or affected by the project or business.

• Employees: These are the people working within the organisation, from the frontline staff to the executives.
• Managers and leaders: Managers and leaders within the organisation who are responsible for decision-making and strategy implementation.

Internal stakeholders work within the organization and are directly invested in the project’s performance.

External Stakeholders

External Stakeholders are individuals, groups, or entities outside the organisation that can influence or be influenced by the project or business.

• Shareholders: These are individuals or entities who hold shares in a publicly traded company.

External stakeholders may not be directly employed at the company or engaged with it but are impacted by the project in some way.

Recognising and engaging with both internal and external stakeholders is crucial for effective management, decision-making, and the overall success of any project or business.

Key Stakeholder Roles

The primary Roles of Stakeholders encompass a wide range of functions that are pivotal to the success and direction of a project or business.

1. Managers: Stakeholders actively participate in the strategic management of the organisation, shaping its overall direction, setting goals, and formulating policies that influence the entire operation.
2. Decision makers: Stakeholders act as decision-makers. They offer valuable insights and expertise to guide choices related to project strategies, resource allocation, risk management, and overall governance.
3. Catalysts of growth: Stakeholders are instrumental in propelling the growth and expansion of the project or business. They actively contribute to this process by providing crucial support, investments, and necessary resources.
4. Acting as corporate conscience: Some Stakeholders serve as a moral compass within the organisation. They ensure ethical and responsible business practices, holding the organisation accountable for its actions.
5. Business supporter: Stakeholders offer critical support in various forms, including financial investments, industry expertise, and advocacy. These forms of backing are essential for the sustained success and prosperity of the project or business.

These primary roles exemplify the multifaceted nature of Stakeholders and underscore their immense significance in steering the course of any business or project.

Stakeholder Responsibilities

The Responsibilities of Stakeholders encompass a broad spectrum of actions and commitments that are indispensable for the smooth functioning of both projects and businesses.

1. Strategic input: Stakeholders offer valuable insights, expertise, and guidance. They help define and refine the project's or organisation's strategic objectives.
2. Resource allocation: Stakeholders actively participate in the allocation of resources.
3. Risk assessment: They identify potential risks and uncertainties that may impact the project or business.
4. Communication and collaboration: Effective collaboration is maintained through open lines of communication.
5. Compliance: Stakeholders adhere to industry regulations, ethical standards, and legal requirements.
6. Advocacy: Stakeholders actively promote and support the project or business to external parties via their Stakeholder Management Plan.
7. Feedback and evaluation: They provide constructive feedback and participate in the evaluation of the project's or business's performance.
8. Conflict resolution: Stakeholders address conflicts and disputes that may arise among Stakeholders or within the project or business.

Recognising and diligently fulfilling these Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities is essential in promoting the principles of Stakeholder Capitalism.

Stakeholders play a constructive and impactful role in Project Management and business operations. Their active engagement and commitment to these duties are pivotal to the success and sustainability of the endeavour at hand.

Understanding Stakeholders and their contributions is essential to achieving project success and business growth.

The Stakeholder Management Process

The stakeholder management process involves nurturing relationships, balancing diverse interests, and actively communicating with those who may influence or be affected by your project. Given these complexities, following a formal and systematic stakeholder management process is crucial.

The stakeholder management process is a continuous, strategic effort to identify, analyze, and communicate with all individuals, groups, or organizations that have an interest or influence in a project or initiative. The goal is to build and maintain positive relationships, manage expectations, and foster cooperation to ensure the project's successful outcome.

An effective stakeholder management process involves gathering information, planning communication, and continually adapting to feedback. Stakeholder management involves four phases or steps: identifying stakeholders, planning stakeholder engagement, managing stakeholder engagement, and monitoring stakeholder engagement.

The four key phases of the stakeholder management process are:

1. Identifying stakeholders.
2. Planning stakeholder engagement.
3. Managing stakeholder engagement.
4. Monitoring stakeholder engagement.

Let's delve deeper into each of these phases.

1. Identifying Project Stakeholders

Identifying project stakeholders is the first phase of project stakeholder management. It involves recognizing who your stakeholders are, what they care about, and their preferred methods of communication. To identify your stakeholders, you can utilize tools and techniques such as stakeholder mapping using power-interest grids, stakeholder cubes, surveys, or focus groups.

After identifying and analyzing your stakeholders, document their information in your stakeholder management tool. You can then create a stakeholder risk register. This document identifies and tracks risks associated with individual stakeholders and their relationship to a project.

Classification: This is where you classify whether they are high or low impact and high or low priority.

2. Planning Stakeholder Engagement

The second key phase in the stakeholder management process is planning stakeholder engagement. According to project management statistics from TeamStage, stakeholder engagement is the most critical factor in achieving project success.

In the engagement stage, the project manager develops a stakeholder engagement strategy and an actionable implementation plan to involve stakeholders based on their interests, level of influence, expectations, and potential impact on the project's success. Project managers can use resources such as a project charter, risk management plan, and resource management plan to develop a stakeholder engagement strategy.

A risk management plan includes information on risk thresholds and suitable engagement strategies.

3. Managing Stakeholder Engagement

The third step in the stakeholder management process is managing stakeholder engagement. To successfully manage stakeholder engagement, you need the documents we previously mentioned, such as a stakeholder register, a communication plan, and a risk management plan. Stakeholder management skills, including communication and interpersonal skills, are essential at this stage.

Stakeholder satisfaction assessment tools are too. Surveys and feedback forms can measure stakeholder satisfaction to ensure you're on track. Log stakeholder sentiment in your stakeholder management tool.

4. Monitoring Stakeholder Engagement

Monitoring stakeholder engagement is the fourth key phase in the stakeholder management process. This step ensures that the stakeholder engagement strategy achieves the desired outcomes and modifies approaches based on changes in stakeholder influence, feedback, or project requirements.

When your project ends, reflect on your stakeholder engagement strategy. Identify what went well and what could have been improved. Document key lessons learned for future projects.

Improving your stakeholder management process can significantly improve project outcomes.

Stakeholder Management Plan

It is a document that outlines core management techniques to effectively understand the stakeholder landscape and engage them throughout the project lifecycle. Typically, a project manager is responsible for creating a stakeholder management plan. However, it is ideal also to involve all the project members to ensure accuracy.

Now that you have a clear picture of what is stakeholder management, let’s take a look at the Clarkson Principles of Stakeholder Management.

Clarkson Principles of Stakeholder Management:

• Acknowledge any conflicts between the project manager and stakeholders.

RACI Matrix

During the Mobilise your buying team step, the core buying team should identify all key stakeholders, define their roles and responsibilities and determine the type and frequency of stakeholder engagement.

People assigned with a task are responsible for developing and completing that project deliverable. If one person has been assigned too many tasks, they may struggle to manage their workload, leading to delays or burnout. To avoid this, project managers should use the RACI to ensure responsibilities are carefully distributed across the team.

Accountable people ensure accountability to project deadlines, and ultimately, accountability to project completion. By clearly defining roles, a RACI prevents decision-making bottlenecks and confusion in the approval process. When roles are ambiguous, critical decisions can get delayed, as team members might not know who holds final accountability.

The RACI eliminates this issue by ensuring that the individual responsible for approvals is clearly designated as Accountable. Additionally, identifying who needs to be consulted or informed reduces unnecessary back-and-forth, allowing decisions to be made quickly and efficiently without roadblocks.

Consulted people’s opinions are crucial, and their feedback needs to be considered at every step. These people provide guidance that is often a prerequisite to other project tasks, for example, providing legal guidance on a project throughout the process.

Informed people are those that need to stay in the loop of communication throughout the project. They do not have to be consulted or be a part of the decision-making, but they should be made aware of all project updates. Typically, these consists of business owners or stakeholders that are more interested in viewing the project at a very high level.

This table is an indicative starting point. This RACI is suitable when there are many activities, tasks and stakeholders to manage.

Each member should update the team on progress and blockers. The stand-up should be used to communicate stakeholder engagement tasks.

RACI Matrix Example:

• R = Responsible
• A = Accountable
• C = Consulted
• I = Informed

Why Stakeholder Management Matters

Research from PMI shows that 75% of project failures can be traced to poor stakeholder engagement, costing organisations $122 million per $1 billion spent on projects. In 2026, stakeholder management matters more than ever-projects are delivered across hybrid teams, decisions are scrutinised more quickly, and misalignment spreads fast (often via digital channels).

The fundamentals of stakeholder management remain constant, but how we execute has evolved dramatically. With distributed teams now standard, 68% of projects involve stakeholders across multiple time zones.

Stakeholder analysis identifies who matters, what they need, and how they may influence the work. The first step is to identify all stakeholders involved in or affected by the project, including sponsors, governance bodies, team members, users, suppliers, and impacted functions.

Stakeholder mapping visualises stakeholders and their importance to delivery.

Stakeholder engagement is the ongoing practice of understanding and responding to stakeholder needs and expectations.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices for stakeholder management:

• Identify Stakeholders - Recognise all individuals and groups affected by or influencing the project.
• Analyse Stakeholders - Assess their interests, influence, and impact.
• Plan Engagement - Develop communication strategies tailored to stakeholder needs.

By developing a comprehensive stakeholder approach, you can keep people informed and engaged throughout delivery. Internally, consider departments, teams, and governance groups your project impacts (e.g., Operations, Sales, Customer Support, Information Security, Compliance). Setting and managing expectations early is vital.

Here are the key things to consider:

• Learn which stakeholders have influence over what areas of the project.
• Make sure that all stakeholders have the final management plan before it is implemented.

By simplifying these steps, Jambo helps support your efforts to build stronger stakeholder relationships, manage risks, and keep your projects moving forward.

During the Mobilise your buying team step, the core buying team should identify all key stakeholders, define their roles and responsibilities and determine the type and frequency of stakeholder engagement.

This section supports buying teams to implement the four components of the Stakeholder management framework.

Identify all individuals and groups who have an interest in, or are impacted by, the project.

Core stakeholders: These are essential for the evaluation, delivery or viability of the product or service.

Direct stakeholders: These are individuals or bodies who interact directly with the product or service and often have a visible role. They may be people or communities who use the service or are impacted by it.

Indirect stakeholders: These are people or bodies who are otherwise affected by the the service. Indirect stakeholders are people whose interest may be enhanced or threatened. They may be more difficult to identify and engage with, however they may have an important role, either as supporters or, in putting up barriers to proposed courses of action.

Identify engagement activities that will meet stakeholder needs, guided by each quadrant -e.g.

Step 1. Allocate stakeholders to governance groups using the outputs from the RACI and stakeholder interest and influence activities. Inclusion within the Steering Committee (SteerCo). Steerco is designed to endorse the direction of the project but also for enablement (i.e. Manage issues, escalations and dependencies e.g. resourcing. Provide innovation buying advisory and guidance.

Step 2. Stakeholder management is a key aspect of project management planning methodologies. It’s important to identify the key buying project activities and detailed tasks so these can be effectively allocated and monitored. List the core project activities for an innovation procurement. Identify risks, innovation benefits and controls to build confidence.

Step 3. The governance core responsibilities example below is illustrative only, and while it provides a starting point for the range of activities that require resourcing, it is not complete. Be accountable for Innovation program outcomes and monitor progress. Manage issues, escalations and dependencies e.g.

Step 4. The columns in the example below represent the project team roles and the rows represent each task. This table is an indicative starting point.

Benefits of Defined Roles and Responsibilities

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities offer several benefits:

• Reduces ambiguity: Clearly defined roles and responsibilities eliminate confusion about who is responsible for what, preventing overlaps, gaps or duplicated efforts.
• Enhances accountability: When each stakeholder knows their specific tasks and deliverables, it becomes easier to track progress and hold individuals accountable for their contributions.
• Improves efficiency: Well-defined roles and responsibilities lead to a more efficient project workflow, as tasks are completed on time and within budget.
• Reduces risks: By identifying potential risks early on and assigning responsibility for mitigating them, the project is less likely to encounter unexpected problems.

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