Stakeholder management in municipal housing - Deriving the companys targets from stakeholder demands

Municipal housing companies create extensive outcome for the public by achieving benefits in economical, social and environmental areas. Surrounded by multiple internal and external stakeholders like municipal holding, council, authorities, tenants, employees, suppliers and service providers, the housing companies have to cope with various demands. Not only should their activities contribute to such diverse areas as social welfare, regional economy and ecology, but they are often asked to also realize considerable profits to reduce budget deficits of the municipality. Fulfilling these different and partly contradictory expectations at the same time is a challenge. Multiple and conflicting objectives combined with a lack of transparency concerning targeted and actual performance of activities whose monetary value is hardly measurable make corporate management difficult. Thus, the fundamental pre-requisite for managing a municipal housing company effectively is a clearly formulated target system. Within the last years some housing companies with focus on social and public housing started measuring their financial, social and ecological performance and communicating their added value for the public. The concept of ìurban returnî tries to calculate a monetary value of the performance of housing companies for a municipality. Besides, a network of European housing companies developed a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report with standardized performance indicators to communicate their performance in various areas. However, both approaches are focused on measuring existing activities. A target system addressing the different stakeholder expectations and supporting an overall effectiveness and efficiency of the company does not yet exist. Therefore, an approach for a sustainable stakeholder management for housing companies is presented. At first, an analysis of the stakeholders and their expectations towards the company is conducted. Based on the resulting overview of expectations target conflicts can be identified. They build the basis for a balance of interests leading to a target system for the effective management of the company. In a further step, a controlling system can be implemented and an appropriate communication plan to stakeholders can be established. The first phases of this stakeholder management concept were applied to a German municipal housing company which had been pioneer in publishing a CSR report within the European housing network. The suggested approach is presented with examples of this case study.