Rethink Project Stakeholder Management

In spite of the overwhelming amount of advice available on how to do project stakeholder management, a steady stream of project failures related to unsatisfied stakeholders has been reported. This made us consider whether the current understanding of project stakeholder management is comprehensive enough to meet the increasing dynamics and the demand for sustainable development and that projects are facing in today's business environment. Current project stakeholder management theory and practices rarely consider new insights from contemporary stakeholder theory, nor are there adequate working forms available for project management practitioners to deal with the increasing complexity of project stakeholder management

Supported by the PMI-sponsored research program, the Project Management Group of WU Vienna and the University of Southern Denmark conducted the two-year research project: Rethink!PSM. The aim of Rethink!PSM is to develop a more comprehensive project stakeholder management approach informed by contemporary stakeholder theory to ensure sustainable development on the project for the investor organization(s) and other project stakeholders. The research discusses the following research questions:

- How can contemporary stakeholder theory contribute to a more comprehensive project stakeholder management in the context of sustainable development?
- Which working forms can adequately support comprehensive project stakeholder management?
- What are the potentials and limitations when applying a more comprehensive project stakeholder management approach?

In the notion of engaged scholarship, we closely cooperate with practitioners to further develop theory and practice. The co-production of knowledge is organized by case studies, focus group workshops, and close links with industry; for example, through the cooperation with NETLIPSE, a network of European transportation infrastructure projects.