Project Stakeholder Management and Engagement: An Analysis of the Drivers of an Evolving Subject Discipline

Abstract:

Project stakeholder management and engagement is now acknowledged as a critical success factor on virtually every project. Its importance and thematic popularity is self-evident from the voluminous body of literature which has been written on the subject, especially since the advent of the new millennium. Also by the increasing attention and consideration projects are according to their stakeholders, both primary and secondary, whose support is seen as critical for enhancing the performance of projects as well as for reducing threats, existential and other, to them. However, little to nothing appears to be known about the key underlying factors – or ‘drivers’ – which over time in academic and practitioner circles have precipitated this tremendous surge in interest in project stakeholders and in seeking out ways and means of managing and engaging them in the best possible way.

This research attempts to bridge this knowledge vacuum. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the project stakeholder literature from academic and other sources, through several discussions and interviews with project managers and staffers, and drawing on their own years-long experience with projects, the authors have identified nine distinct fundamental ‘drivers’. These drivers collectively are the reason why stakeholders have emerged as the prime force to be reckoned with on projects in the past few decades, especially in large and complex projects as in construction and civil infrastructure development. Though this research offers little in terms of practical guidance for project decision-makers and is actually more of historical interest it nevertheless clearly and convincingly shows why stakeholders have gradually become so crucial for projects and hence the need and justification for their effective management and engagement.

Speaker

• Aurangzeb Khan