There is a quiet pattern that repeats itself across the public sector. A procurement begins with a clear objective, a considered commercial strategy and, on paper at least, the right governance structure. The market is engaged properly. The specification is robust. Competition is healthy. And yet somewhere between approval and delivery, things start to fray. Timelines stretch. Scope shifts. Concerns emerge late in the day. Confidence ebbs.

When we look back, we often blame the process: the route to market, the evaluation model, the drafting of the contract. Occasionally those are the culprits. Often, though, the difficulty lies elsewhere. It sits in the organisation itself, in misunderstood, unmanaged or underestimated stakeholders.

In local authorities, universities, NHS bodies and central government departments alike, procurement operates at the junction of politics, policy, finance, operations and scrutiny. It is rarely owned by one person in any meaningful sense. Decisions are collective, but accountability is expected to be individual. That tension alone can create risk.

Stakeholder mapping, done properly, is not a box-ticking exercise at the start of a project. It is a disciplined attempt to understand how the organisation actually works, not how the organogram suggests it should.

Moving beyond the simple grid

Most of us were introduced to stakeholder analysis through a familiar matrix: interest on one axis, influence on the other. It remains a useful starting point, and shouldn’t be discounted, but in complex public procurements, it is rarely sufficient. Influence is not fixed. It is situational.

A senior sponsor may be highly visible at the outset, championing the business case and securing political backing. Once the project moves into detailed design or competition, that sponsor may step back, leaving operational teams and advisers to carry the detail. Conversely, a finance lead who appears peripheral early on may become decisive when affordability is tested under pressure.

The same applies during moments of stress. A legal adviser may not shape day-to-day decisions, but during a challenge or a contentious clarification, their influence can become pivotal.

If we treat influence as static, we miss how it behaves in practice. Effective stakeholder mapping recognises that power shifts over the life of a procurement and that those shifts are predictable if we look carefully enough.

The implications of the Procurement Act 2023

The arrival of the Procurement Act 2023 has sharpened the need for this kind of organisational clarity.

The Act introduces greater flexibility in procedure and a stronger emphasis on transparency and justification. Contracting authorities must be able to demonstrate that decisions are proportionate, fair and defensible. That obligation does not sit solely with the procurement team. It sits with the authority as a whole.

In practice, that means clarity over who is genuinely taking which decisions, and who is prepared to stand behind them if they are challenged. In many organisations, decision-making is more diffuse than governance documents may suggest. Recommendations are shaped informally before they reach formal boards. Risks are softened in conversation. Positions are agreed in corridors and then presented as settled.

None of this is inherently improper. It is, however, real. If procurement professionals ignore these dynamics, they risk discovering too late that the person formally approving a decision does not feel ownership of it, or that a key voice was never truly aligned.

Under the new regime, unclear ownership is a governance risk.

Roles are not the same as stakeholders

One of the most common mistakes in procurement planning is to confuse roles with stakeholders. A role is a formal designation: project sponsor, budget holder, procurement lead, legal adviser, project manager. These titles describe responsibility within a structure.

A stakeholder is anyone whose behaviour can materially affect the outcome. That may include operational teams who must live with the contract long after award. It may include end users who influence demand informally, shaping expectations through habit and precedent. It certainly includes finance teams who control the release of funds and elected members or governors who retain approval rights.

It may also extend beyond the authority itself; to regulators, auditors, funders and, in some cases, influential suppliers whose market position shapes what is realistically deliverable. Mapping only the formal roles creates blind spots. Mapping stakeholders requires asking a different question: who can slow this down, reshape it or quietly undermine it if they feel unheard?

Understanding how power is exercised

In public procurement, power does not sit neatly in a single place. It tends to manifest in overlapping forms. There is obvious decision power: the ability to approve, block or amend a proposal. But alongside it sits resource power; control over budgets, staff time or access to specialist expertise. There is expert power, derived from technical knowledge that others rely upon. There is political power, rooted in governance structures or informal networks. And there is narrative power: the ability to shape how success or failure is described internally and externally.

Narrative power is often underestimated. The individual who frames a procurement as “essential modernisation” or, conversely, as “risky transformation” can materially influence appetite for innovation and risk. Those narratives tend to persist long after the initial discussion.

A robust stakeholder map considers these different forms of power. It asks not only who signs the approval form, but who shapes the story that surrounds it.

Influence changes across the lifecycle

Procurements move through recognisable phases: concept and business case, strategy development, competition, award, mobilisation and delivery. The balance of influence changes across each stage.

During early strategy work, finance and policy teams may dominate discussions about affordability and alignment with organisational priorities. During the competitive process, procurement and legal teams often exert greater control to protect compliance and manage risk. Once the contract is awarded, operational managers and suppliers typically hold most of the practical influence over whether anticipated outcomes are realised.

A stakeholder map created at the outset and never revisited quickly becomes obsolete. Mature organisations treat it as a living document, refreshing their understanding at key milestones and adjusting engagement accordingly.

Behaviour follows incentives

Stakeholders rarely act irrationally. They act in line with their incentives. A project sponsor may be incentivised, formally or informally, to launch an initiative and secure visible progress. An operational manager may value certainty and continuity over marginal gains in value for money. Finance colleagues may prioritise budget control and in-year savings. Elected members may focus on demonstrable outcomes within electoral cycles.

None of these positions are unreasonable. Problems arise when they pull in different directions and no one has surfaced the tension openly. Mapping stakeholders without considering incentives risks producing a tidy diagram that explains little. When we take the time to understand what success looks like for each party, we are better placed to anticipate behaviour rather than react to it.

The cost of getting it wrong

When stakeholder dynamics are poorly understood, the symptoms are familiar. Objections emerge late in the process, framed as new information. Scope expands through “clarifications” that were never part of the original intent. Risk is transferred to suppliers without acknowledgement, only to resurface during mobilisation. Delivery teams inherit commitments they did not feel party to.

These outcomes are often attributed to weak procurement practice. In reality, they frequently reflect unmanaged organisational complexity. By the time a procurement reaches the market, most of the critical decisions have already been shaped internally. If alignment is fragile at that point, no amount of procedural rigour will fully compensate.

Stakeholder mapping as governance, not politics

There is sometimes discomfort around stakeholder mapping, as though it involves political manoeuvring or the neutralisation of dissent. That is a misunderstanding. At its best, stakeholder mapping strengthens governance. It clarifies where decisions should sit, which forums genuinely matter and where escalation routes are realistic rather than theoretical. It allows procurement teams to judge when to pause for alignment and when to proceed with confidence.

It also surfaces disagreement early. Dissent is not inherently problematic. It is often a signal of unaddressed risk or unresolved trade-offs. The aim is not unanimity; it is informed consent. In some cases, honest stakeholder mapping will reveal that a procurement should not proceed in its current form. That insight, though uncomfortable, is preferable to a protracted and costly failure.

Keeping it practical

None of this requires elaborate software or complex modelling. In my experience, the most effective stakeholder mapping happens through structured conversation. Facilitated workshops can surface informal influence that would never appear on an organisation chart. Scenario testing, asking who would intervene if a key assumption were challenged, can reveal hidden power centres. Reviewing decision rights against actual behaviour, rather than policy documents, often exposes gaps between theory and practice.

Procurement as a social system

Procurement is sometimes described as a technical discipline, defined by regulation and process. Those elements are important. But in reality, procurement is a social system embedded within wider organisational, political and economic contexts.

We operate within cultures, hierarchies, histories and informal networks. We manage competing incentives and differing risk appetites. We balance compliance with delivery pressure. Stakeholder mapping is simply a structured way of acknowledging that reality.

Well-executed stakeholder mapping will not remove complexity. It will not eliminate disagreement. What it will do is replace assumption with insight and optimism with realism. And in public procurement, that realism is often the difference between a contract that exists on paper and a service that works in practice.

(This article was first published in the March / April 2026 edition of In-procurement Magazine, pgs. 32-36).