Critical activities for the successful management of external stakeholders in construction projects
Start Date
26-3-2021 11:30 AM
End Date
26-3-2021 11:45 AM
Description
The increasing number of external stakeholders and multiplicity of their needs and expectations require careful consideration and management in projects. However, external stakeholders have received relatively little attention in research and practice when compared to internal stakeholders. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluating the critical activities contributing to external stakeholder management success at the project planning stage from the perspective of developing countries. Questionnaire survey data was collected from project management practitioners in Ghana and analysed using mean scoring, factor analysis, and fuzzy synthetic evaluation. Seven groups of contributing activities were established, namely; involving external stakeholders and ensuring mutual trust (weighting = 0.163), effective communication with external stakeholders (weighting = 0.162), sustaining relationships with external stakeholders (weighting = 0.152), preliminary planning (weighting = 0.140), analysing project and external stakeholder information (weighting = 0.130), assessing external stakeholder attributes and needs (weighting = 0.128), and developing and applying effective strategies (weighting = 0.126). Following, a practice framework was developed, exemplified, and validated with experts in Ghana. The findings contribute to advancing stakeholder theory in construction research in the context of developing countries. Practitioners can effectively implement, evaluate, compare and improve the contributing activities in external stakeholder management process to inform about needed managerial decisions in projects. The findings will guide practitioners to be more externally oriented and accommodating toward external stakeholders; distribute managerial attention properly in undertaking activities; proactively mitigate external stakeholder issues; manage project more ethically and sustainably; and develop managerial competency requirements.
Recommended Citation
Oppong, D. G., & Chan, A. P. C. (2021, March). Critical activities for the successful management of external stakeholders in construction projects. Presented at the Postgraduate Conference on Interdisciplinary Learning: Re-Imagining Postgraduate Studies in the 21st Century and Beyond. Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Critical activities for the successful management of external stakeholders in construction projects
The increasing number of external stakeholders and multiplicity of their needs and expectations require careful consideration and management in projects. However, external stakeholders have received relatively little attention in research and practice when compared to internal stakeholders. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluating the critical activities contributing to external stakeholder management success at the project planning stage from the perspective of developing countries. Questionnaire survey data was collected from project management practitioners in Ghana and analysed using mean scoring, factor analysis, and fuzzy synthetic evaluation. Seven groups of contributing activities were established, namely; involving external stakeholders and ensuring mutual trust (weighting = 0.163), effective communication with external stakeholders (weighting = 0.162), sustaining relationships with external stakeholders (weighting = 0.152), preliminary planning (weighting = 0.140), analysing project and external stakeholder information (weighting = 0.130), assessing external stakeholder attributes and needs (weighting = 0.128), and developing and applying effective strategies (weighting = 0.126). Following, a practice framework was developed, exemplified, and validated with experts in Ghana. The findings contribute to advancing stakeholder theory in construction research in the context of developing countries. Practitioners can effectively implement, evaluate, compare and improve the contributing activities in external stakeholder management process to inform about needed managerial decisions in projects. The findings will guide practitioners to be more externally oriented and accommodating toward external stakeholders; distribute managerial attention properly in undertaking activities; proactively mitigate external stakeholder issues; manage project more ethically and sustainably; and develop managerial competency requirements.