What do you understand by 'stakeholder analysis'?

Stakeholder analysis is the identification of a project or activity's key stakeholders, an assessment of their interests, and the ways in which these interests affect project's riskiness and viability. It is linked to both institutional appraisal and social analysis: drawing on the information deriving from these approaches, but also contributing to the combining of such data in a single framework. Stakeholder analysis contributes to project design/activity design through the logical framework, and by helping to identify appropriate forms of stakeholder participation. Doing a stakeholder analysis can: Draw out the interests of stakeholders in relation to the problems which the project is seeking to address (at the identification stage) or the purpose of the project (once it has started) Identify conflicts of interests between stakeholders Help to identify relations between stakeholders which can be built upon, and may enable establish synergies Help to assess the appropriate type of participation by different stakeholders. The underlining factor in the stakeholder concept is that every activity of an organization should be based taking into account the interests of all the stakeholders. A holistic approach ensuring fairness to all the stakeholders is completely necessary for the sustainability of an enterprise.