Stakeholders in Smart Cities

 

Following the pioneering definitions for the stakeholders as well as the practitioners’ classifications, this research classified the smart city stakeholders into three classes including:

  1. Citizens/companies
  2. Authorities and
  3. Service developers

History

Freeman (1984) identified the stakeholder as “any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the achievement of the organization’s objectives”. Developing the precedent works, Savage et al. (1991) identified four key stakeholder types:

  1. The supportive stakeholder who supports the organization’s goals and actions
  2. The marginal stakeholder who is neither highly threatening nor especially cooperative
  3. The non-supportive stakeholder, and
  4. The mixed blessing stakeholder who has an equal potential to threaten and cooperate

The above mentioned classes have been defined theoretically. Similar classifications are considered in real world practices. For instance, Kumar et al. (2011) conducted an exploratory research on the health care system and considered stakeholders as: patients (as the users of the services), physicians, pharmacies, medical vendors, ancillary providers (as the service providers) and managers (as the governance members). Similarly, Zapata et al. (2013) introduced various stakeholders for the transport system as the citizens, the city councils, and the industries to provide a service.

Examples

  • Education system stakeholders are students, parents, teachers and administrators (Choi (2012); Jeong et al. (2013))
  • Healthcare system stakeholders are patients, physicians, pharmacies, medical equipment vendors, medical service vendors, ancillary providers, government (Laric (2009); Bergman (2011); Maxwell et al. (2003); Coulter (2005); Allsop (2008); Song (2008); Fang (2009); Laric (2009); (WHO, 2007); Kumar (2011); Kilbourne (2006); Kaiseredu (2008))
  • Transport System stakeholders are citizens, city councils and transport industry (Eißel (2014); Santos (2010); Gwilliam (2003); Banister (2008); Noland and Polak (2002); Shergold (2010); Zapata et al. (2013))

References

  • Allsop, J. and Jones, K., 2008. Withering the citizen, managing the consumer: complaints in healthcare settings. Social Policy and Society, 7(2), pp.233-243.
  • Banister, D., 2008. The sustainable mobility paradigm. Transport policy, 15(2), pp.73-80.
  • Bergman, B., Neuhauser, D. and Provost, L., 2011. Five main processes in healthcare: a citizen perspective. BMJ quality & safety, 20(Suppl 1), pp.i41-i42.
  • Coulter, A. and Jenkinson, C., 2005. European patients’ views on the responsiveness of health systems and healthcare providers. European journal of public health, 15(4), pp.355-360.
  • Eißel, D. and Chu, C.P., 2014. The future of sustainable transport system for Europe. AI & society, 29(3), pp.387-402.
  • Fang, H., Chen, J. and Rizzo, J.A., 2009. Explaining urban-rural health disparities in China. Medical care, 47(12), pp.1209-1216.
  • Gwilliam, K., 2003. Urban transport in developing countries. Transport Reviews, 23(2), pp.197-216.
  • Jeong, J.S., Kim, M. and Yoo, K.H., 2013. A content oriented smart education system based on cloud computing. International Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, 8(6), pp.313-328.
  • Choi, J. and Lee, Y., 2012, June. The status of SMART education in KOREA. In EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology (pp. 175-178). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
  • Kaiseredu (2008). US healthcare background and brief. available at: www.kaiseredu.org/topics_im.asp?imID¼1&parentID¼61&id¼358 (accessed 15 October 2008).
  • Kilbourne, A.M., Switzer, G., Hyman, K., Crowley-Matoka, M. and Fine, M.J., 2006. Advancing health disparities research within the health care system: a conceptual framework. American journal of public health, 96(12), pp.2113-2121.
  • Kumar, S., Ghildayal, N.S. and Shah, R.N., 2011. Examining quality and efficiency of the US healthcare system. International journal of health care quality assurance, 24(5), pp.366-388.
  • Laric, M.V., Pitta, D.A. and Katsanis, L.P., 2009. Consumer concerns for healthcare information privacy: a comparison of US and Canadian perspectives. Research in Healthcare Financial Management, 12(1), p.93.
  • Maxwell, J., Rosell, S. and Forest, P.G., 2003. Giving citizens a voice in healthcare policy in Canada. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 326(7397), p.1031.
  • Noland, R.B. and Polak, J.W., 2002. Travel time variability: a review of theoretical and empirical issues. Transport reviews, 22(1), pp.39-54.
  • Santos, G., Behrendt, H. and Teytelboym, A., 2010. Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport. Research in transportation economics, 28(1), pp.46-91.
  • Shergold, I. and Parkhurst, G., 2010. Operationalising ‘sustainable mobility’: the case of transport policy for older citizens in rural areas. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(2), pp.336-339.
  • Song, S., 2008. Government promises equitable healthcare for all. Chinese government’s official web portal. China Daily, 8, pp.2008-01.
  • China Daily, 8 January. Available at: www.gov.cn/english/2008-01/08/content_852428.htm.
  • Zapata Cortes, J.A., Arango Serna, M.D. and Andres Gomez, R., 2013. Information systems applied to transport improvement. DYNA, 80(180), pp.77-86.