Stakeholder analysis: Learning through community discourse boundaries

There is a call by many to adopt alternative perspectives when analysing organizational and management behaviour. An area of investigation not much publicised in management theory, in, particular in the analysis of stakeholder participation, is discourse analysis. This paper adopts a critical management approach and combines three theoretical approaches to produce an analysis of community discourse, based on process rather than structural analysis. The combination of community based discourse, boundary and discourse regulation theory produces an active process analysis that contributes to the understanding of stakeholder membership and contribution. A model of community discourse is developed and a management development application of the process is described.