environmental management (Gokhale, 2001), medicine (Efstathiou et al., 2008; Keeney et al., 2001) and
strategic management (Loo, 2002), while it is applied to select performance indicators in several fields (Ma et al.,
2011). Typically, Delphi methodology involves expert panel, repeated rounds, opportunity for respondents to
reconsider their responses and finally, anonymity of the expert panel.
3.1.1 Expert panel
Delphi technique incorporates an iterative survey of experts (Huge et al., 2010). There is no agreement on what
an expert is, as different definitions are proposed (Keeney et al., 2001; Baker et al., 2006) and whatever
definition is given seems arbitrary (Goodman, 1987). Many authors propose an appropriate size of expert panel
varying from a few to a few hundred experts (Cavalli-Sforza and Ortolano, 1984; Wild and Torgersen, 2000;
Skulmoski et al. 2007). However, there is no standard number of experts (Williams and Webb, 1994) as it
depends on the nature of the problem (Powell, 2003). In the case of this study, the companies’ executives from
the CSR departments or Communication departments, when CSR department does not exist, are selected for two
main reasons. On the one hand, CSR is a concept arisen by companies, CSR executives can perceive the needs of
stakeholders better than other types of experts and the personal experience of companies’ executives could be
considered as an important criterion for their selection (Loo, 2002). On the other hand, in Greece the concept of
Journal of Sustainable Development
Vol. 4, No. 2; April 2011
ISSN 1913-9063
E-ISSN 1913-9071
20
CSR is not well developed, the experts for CSR are limited and their judgment would not be reliable because the
telecommunication sector is distinguished for its unique CSR characteristics. Additionally, the CSR experts
outside the company have higher expectations standards than other stakeholders or experts (Dawkins, 2004).
3.1.2 Repeated Rounds
Another characteristic of the method is the sequential rounds of questionnaires. The majority of studies include
open-ended questions formulating the initial questionnaire in the first round, which is the base for the second
round, and ask the expert panel to comment on the issues (Thangaretinam and Redman, 2005;
Chu and Hwang,
2008). However, Hsu and Sandford (2007) support that the first round can be based on extensive literature
review. In the second round and the subsequent ones, specific items are ranked or assessed by criteria of
significance. In this study, three rounds of Delphi survey are conducted (Green et al., 1990; Turoff, 1970;
Thangaretinam and Redman, 2005; Delbecg et al., 1975; Linstone and Turoff, 1975; Bowles, 1999) and each
round is based on the results of the previous ones (Sumsion, 1998).
Round 1
: The first round is based on literature review, thus, four sources are indentified in order to distinguish
the most import stakeholders:
telecommunication companies,
methodologies by SRI indexes,
authors and
international organizations
As regards the first source which is the base for the stakeholders’ categorization, the annual CSR reports of
Greek and European foreign telecommunication companies are taken into account. The authors attempt to
suggest a limited number of indicators covering the most important aspects of CSR for reasons of simplicity.
