Assessing stakeholder salience through the view of lean enterprise transformation

Abstract

Aerospace enterprises tend to take a strategic approach to managing their enterprise. This thesis posits that stakeholder theory presents another way of looking at the enterprise, as it incorporates elements of both structure and behavior. Using a Lean enterprise thinking framework, this thesis employs stakeholder theory to explain enterprise dynamics and decision making. The thesis uses Enterprise Architecture (EA) theory, developed at MIT's Lean Advancement Initiative (LAI), for the Lean thinking enterprise framework. The thesis proposes that an enterprise's core ideology drives its business model and enterprise architecture spaces, which in turn drives stakeholder networks. Stakeholder saliency and identification is based on the relevance of their values exchanges to the enterprise business model and capabilities contributed to the EA. Finally, this system evolves over Epochs, which are a function of time. These ideas are applied to architecting future states of an enterprise. Quantitative models of stakeholder saliency, stakeholder network control structures, Design Structure Matrix, ESAT, and system dynamics are investigated. The thesis finds that stakeholder networks are context dependent with enterprise Epochs. Enterprise core ideology and leadership saliency are the only constants in the system. The thesis adds to insights on stakeholder salience, in a Lean enterprise context, that may be generalized to the aerospace and defense industry. The findings are significant to the aerospace industry's ability to optimize value creation.