NEWS

Use-centred at heart

iCareCoops is committed to their users. Stakeholder requirements and expectations are strongly emphasised within the elaboration of the ICT tools to ensure flexible and practical solutions that can easily be used by elderly people. The design and conception phase will rely not only on participation from elderly care cooperatives and other carers as targeted users, but will also require input from AAL suppliers and their expertise. The conception phase aims to generate strong use cases designed to define ICT-supported cooperative service modules.

Stakeholder re-defined

1984 R. Edward Freeman started the field of stakeholder theory. Considering his background in strategic management his early theory has to be taken with a grain of salt in the context of elderly care. Clarkson provides a useful classification speaking of primary stakeholders, on whom a company depends, and secondary stakeholders, who are influential but not directly engaged with everyday business. The way both types interact with each other has vast influences on a company’s success. Thus, the relevance of having a clear definition of care stakeholders is very high.

Investigating more than 200 organisations all across Europe

All partners first identified stakeholders according to the definition in their countries resulting in structured list of over 200 organisations located in Spain, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, the UK, Malta, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark. Then, primary and secondary stakeholders of care cooperatives were analysed and characterised. Results show great differences and regional specifics. A majority of initiatives is, for instance, listed as registered association. Some are financed exclusively by national governments, while others operate to make a profit. Customers of care products and services, on the other hand, are not only used by members, but by a much wider network of people in need. The fifty most promising cases have been examined in more depth, showing that fourteen stakeholders are members of the respective cooperative and 12 are state institutions. Results include further investigations of shareholders, investors, employees, customers, suppliers, governments, communities, the media and other related companies and can be found in the corresponding report. <LINK TO DELIVERABLE ON PROJECT WEBSITE> Moreover, the comprehensive stakeholder list will be translated into a highly intuitive, interactive map with engaging content layers on the iCareCoops web-platform.

From stakeholder identification to stakeholder studies

Only after the identification of relevant primary stakeholders the in-depth end-user studies can be performed. This next step in the development of iCareCoops aims to derive group-specific requirements, expectations, and constraints, including the evaluation of legal, cultural, and ethical issues related to ICT-based support of care cooperatives. Stakeholder interviews and focus groups will deliver pioneering insights regarding workflows and other organisational matters the platform can help with. These results mean the next step towards realising the bold vision of iCareCoops, an innovative web-based platform which offers interactive ICT- and AAL-based services, processes and mobile applications to enable an environment of true collaboration and cooperation which supports carers and cooperatives in their diverse and demanding tasks.