Chapter 23: Project Stakeholder Mapping - Analyzing the Interests of Project Stakeholders


Graham M. Winch, Ph.D.UMIST
Sten Bonke, Ph.D., M.A., Technical University of Denmark

Introduction

This chapter draws on theories of the social construction of technology to present a methodology aimed at enabling the better understanding, and hence management, of the definition of the project mission that explicitly addresses the inherently politicized nature of decision-making at this stage of the project life cycle. It therefore offers a complement to the better-known capital budgeting and cost-benefit analysis techniques that are frequently deployed to aid project scope definition. Through the presentation of three case studies of major construction projects, it presents two tools—the stakeholder map and the power/interest matrix—as tools for facilitating the more rigorous analysis of potential threats to the project arising from stakeholder activities. The three case studies are the development of farming in southern Egypt, the rebuilding of the Beirut, Lebanon central district following fifteen years of civil war, and the rebuilding of Montserrat in the West Indies following a devastating volcanic eruption.

The management of project stakeholders is a task of growing importance for project managers (Calvert 1995). Understanding their interests and relative power is vital for the effective management of the inception stages of many projects as the scope is defined. This chapter will build on research that developed an innovative stakeholder mapping approach to understand the management of Denmark's Storeb aelt project, which linked Zealand to the European mainland for the first time. The model maps stakeholders in terms of problems, solutions, and artifacts and then locates them on the power/interest matrix.

The approach, which regards technologies as socially constructed, concentrates on mapping the different stakeholders, what their interests are, and the likely compromises on scope definition that they would accept to allow the project to go forward. Thus, the roles of different national government ministries; politicians; clients; environmental groups; local winners and losers; and other project actors can all be mapped as a way of understanding how different project options are evaluated and a compromise is reached. Failure to achieve compromise typically leads to the cancellation of the project. After introducing the approach, the chapter will go on to apply it to the three projects—the Toshka project in the south of Egypt; the rebuilding of Beirut by SOLIDERE; and the housing program launched on the island of Montserrat following the devastating volcanic eruption of 1997.

[1]This chapter was prepared while the first-named author was Velux Visiting Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. We are both grateful to the Villum Kann Rasmussen Fonden for supporting the preparation of both the Project Management Insitute Research Conference 2000 paper and this chapter.




The Frontiers of Project Management Research
The Frontiers of Project Management Research
ISBN: 1880410745
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 207

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