Investigating perspective taking when infrastructure megaproject teams engage local communities: Navigating tensions and balancing perspectives

Abstract

Research on infrastructure megaprojects and community engagement is increasingly concerned with the cognitive factors that underpin engagement processes and actions. The ability of project teams to take the perspective of local communities is an important influence on how community engagement occurs. However this involves project teams confronting contradictions and tensions between local community perspectives and their own. Understanding how project teams respond to tensions between and seek to balance both perspectives is thus important, but this is relatively unexplored in literature to date. In response, this study utilizes the concept of ‘perspective-taking’, adopting a paradox lens to examine how tensions between the perspectives of local communities and project teams manifest and how project teams navigate these during community engagement. Through an exploratory case, the study reveals the specific cognitive attributes that enable infrastructure megaproject teams to be more effective in perspective-taking through balancing both local community and their own perspectives.