The Zero Cost of Stakeholder Management

I am on my way to the Academy of Management 2011 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas. The focus of my presentation is based on the philosophy of the Quality movement: quality is free! I am developing a line of argument that advocates a proper investment in stakeholder relationship management is more than balanced by the reduction in the failure dollars needed to fix the issues caused by poor stakeholder relationship management.

The cost of implementing effective quality and safety procedures is visible and accepted by management, but the result of effective processes is to make the cost of the failures these processes avoided invisible. You cannot measure what did not happen!

At the moment, measuring the cost of failed stakeholder management processes is relatively simple; several examples are discussed in the paper. However, management remains reluctant to invest in the solution to achieve similar outcomes to quality and safety. The challenge is cultural.

To read more on this emerging concept, see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers_142.html