Stakeholder management in construction: An empirical study to address research gaps in previous studies

Abstract

This paper concentrates on identifying gaps in the scope of previous studies on stakeholder management, and starting to address those gaps by conducting an empirical study. To complete these research objectives, literature review, interviews, questionnaire survey, and a case study were used in this study. Four gaps regarding critical success factors, stakeholder management process, methods for stakeholder management and stakeholder relationship management were identified. Based on an empirical study, a framework for effective stakeholder management is proposed, and the application of a Social Network Analysis technique, as a means of determining the influence of stakeholders on decision making, is illustrated and validated by a case study. These findings can serve as initial references towards a more systematic approach for stakeholder management. Since the empirical study was conducted only in Hong Kong and Australia, further studies should be conducted in other regions to validate and compare with the finding in this paper.