Stakeholder and Goal Analysis

Abstract

Design science research projects take place in normative context of laws, regulations, constraints, ethics, human values, desires, and goals. In this chapter, we discuss goals. In utility-driven projects, there are stakeholders who have goals that the research project must contribute to. In exploratory projects, potential stakeholders may not know that they are potential stakeholders, and it may not be clear what their goals are. Nevertheless, or because of that, even in exploratory projects, it is useful to think about who might be interested in the project results and, importantly, who would sponsor the project. After all, design research should produce potentially useful knowledge. We therefore discuss possible stakeholders in Sect. 4.1 and discuss the structure of stakeholder desires and goals in Sect. 4.2. In Sect. 4.3, we classify possible conflicts among stakeholder desires that may need to be resolved by the project.