The practice of strategic engagement for social impact

Abstract

Stakeholders play a key role in enabling social impact. However, traditional approaches to stakeholder engagement are often transactional and fail to incorporate the relational, influencing practices required to co-create system-wide change. To date, there is limited research exploring how a strategic engagement approach, which positions stakeholders as active participants in dynamic systems, can co-create value through collaboration, reciprocity and shared accountability. This study aims to address this gap by exploring how strategic engagement can be applied in a primary healthcare context to achieve sustainable social impact. A case study was undertaken to examine how practitioners can be more effective when engaging with stakeholders to create social impact. Qualitative data were drawn from workshop reflections and individual interviews with healthcare leaders and project managers who participated in capacity-building training on strategic engagement. Healthcare leaders and program managers require accessible and pragmatic strategies to create social impact in dynamic service systems. Following training, participants felt better equipped to understand the service delivery context as a complex system; identify and influence stakeholders based on influence, authority and lived experience; co-create mutually beneficial and equitable outcomes; sustain stakeholder relationships and trust; and monitor and evaluate the impact of stakeholder engagement to support learning and adaptation. This study introduces “strategic engagement” as an evidence-based framework to engage stakeholders that deliver significant social impacts, in the healthcare sector and beyond. The framework was developed to enable practitioners to apply theoretical insights from a service logic to effectively identify and navigate stakeholders embedded in service systems. In addition, we offer a practical toolkit to encourage professionals to move beyond transactional engagement plans towards creating more relational, dynamic and system-orientated approaches with their stakeholders.