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Abstract Stakeholder engagement for governance leadership has drawn interest from researchers, government agencies, and leaders of organizations with direct water management expertise and responsibilities. Most prominent research on theory and methods of engagement is documented in business management and natural resources management spheres. In contrast to public sector engagement initiatives, especially in the domain of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), the available literature mostly focuses on the experiences of specific studies. The plethora of research publications on such specific studies, on the one hand, provides examples of many attributes essential in an engagement initiative while, on the other hand, signifies a lack of literature on methodological approaches. Water governance leadership is about implementing socially acceptable water allocation and regulation and includes laws, regulations and institutions as well as government policies and actions. Nonetheless, a successful engagement process for governance leadership needs to be strategic with an appropriate scale for interaction defined and consideration is given to a practice that melds cognitive research with discipline expertise. In this paper, we critically examine the process of formulating a strategic engagement process based on theories, methods, and experiences from a wide spectrum of literature to develop a model for a holistic view of “engagement process.” The engagement process is reflected under three stages: initiating, planning, and participatory engagement and it is contextualized under the characteristics and aspects of best practices in IWRM initiatives and water governance leadership. Six additional critical inputs for a successful stakeholder engagement are also recognized, viz., denoted by RECIPE—Representative inclusion, Early engagement, Continuity within the process stages, Interactions between participants, Participatory models, and tools and Effective communication. Further, the monitoring and evaluation process, which forms an essential component in an engagement process, is discussed and summarized through a framework for stakeholder engagement in IWRM and water governance leadership. The outcome of this paper is expected to provide insights into stakeholder engagement process in different contexts in the applications of better management of scarce and precious water resources. Further it is expected to be a guiding literature for future work on specific issues and experiences in stakeholder engagement for water governance.
Thoradeniya et al. (Thu,) studied this question.