Stakeholders and the Paralympic Games

This chapter adopts stakeholder theory as a heuristic approach to explore the stakeholders of the Paralympic Games and Movement. Any attempt to understand and manage the complex array of stakeholders that collectively make up the Paralympic Movement is a challenging task for a number of reasons. First, the term stakeholder is often used without a clear understanding of the term. For example, in the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Final Report (IOC 2013), the word “stakeholder” was used 57 times, making reference to government, commercial partners, transportation, and security agencies among others. But nowhere in the document was the full list of actual stakeholders provided. Furthermore, many organizations either influence or are influenced by the Paralympic Games and Movement and can therefore claim to have a “stake” within the Paralympic Games, but does that necessarily make them a stakeholder per se? Hence, the term stakeholder is one that is used so often that we rarely stop to reflect on its actual meaning.