Project Benefits Co-Creation: Stakeholders and Sustainable Development

Sustainable development (SD) requires integrative thinking and action with a multiplicity of stakeholders. Accordingly, this paper offers benefits co creation with various project stakeholders as a viable approach to meeting present and future SD concerns and explores "How do projects realize sustainable development benefits through co creation with stakeholders?" A three-dimensional conceptual framework is developed: (1) project benefits realization; (2) project stakeholder management, (3) co-creation in projects. The framework is applied as a theoretical lens to two case studies to investigate the research question. The research illustrates SD benefits co creation encourages long-term focus on project outcomes in line with temporal concerns of SD and enables the project to shape expected benefits through inclusive interaction with multiple stakeholders. The ability of stakeholders to address their individual value and SD benefits realization concerns sustains co creation participation while stakeholder engagement approaches combine to help the stability of the co creation network.