ANT Stakeholder Action Mapping Tool and User Guide
Robyn Mayes, Bree Hurst, Amelia Hine · QUT ePrints (Queensland University of Technology) · 2021
The ANT Stakeholder Action Mapping Tool offers a valuable alternative to existing stakeholder and social licence mapping techniques which tend to understand stakeholders as static entities. In contrast, the ANT tool presents a dynamic approach to identifying and responding to stakeholders. It is based on extensive research into stakeholder views, drivers, and corresponding actions and interactions. Most stakeholder engagement frameworks aim to navigate around stakeholder views and often exclude those which might impact the approvals timeline. The authors’ research demonstrates that this approach does not work in the long term, as stakeholders assert themselves in various ways throughout the approvals process, disrupting the timeline and blowing out project costs. This methodology and the terms used draw on the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law, who collectively developed Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT is a powerful method for mapping stakeholder interactions because it decentres the organisation, recognises the dynamic nature of stakeholder views, and highlights the actions that stakeholders can - and do - take to make their views heard. This User Guide outlines two ways to use this ANT method, depending on whether it is being used to look back over an approvals process to understand what happened (the Retrospective method), or to map possible stakeholders at the beginning of the approvals process (the Predictive method). Each method is very different to the other, so it is important to select the method most appropriate to your situation.