Managing stakeholders around inter-organizational systems: A diagnostic approach

Inter-organizational systems (IOS) are generally used in a context of many interested parties. If these parties are not identified and if their power and interests related to the IOS are not explored and taken into consideration, implementation is likely to be disappointing and troublesome. This paper presents a diagnostic approach to the identification of stakeholders around IOS and the assessment of their power and interests with respect to these IOS. This approach is illustrated by means of an in-depth case study. This case study indicates that focusing on power and interest relationships may help make the critical success factors in the implementation and improvement of inter-organizational systems more explicit. The framework explicitly stimulates users to repeat their analysis of the players and their power and interests in order to acquire new ‘pictures’ of the playing field. Given the various positions, these modified pictures then have to be interpreted and used to make new plans of action.