Identifying and influencing the essential elements of stakeholder engagement leading to the success of socially controversial projects

Abstract

At the heart of gaining stakeholder acceptance for any project, but especial socially controversial projects, is the need to build relationships and maintain a belief among stakeholders that the project's success is in the best interest of the group. In the nuclear enterprise, previous attempts to engage stakeholders and foster project acceptance have been well designed physically (i.e., technologically sound), but have struggled because they were tone-deaf to the complex, social, political, cognitive and technological factors that play a significant role in the formation of a stakeholder's acceptance of a project. To mitigate societal and cognitive influences on the outcome of socially controversial projects, there is a need to rethink the way project implementers approach complex stakeholder relationships in order to align stakeholder interests, ultimately building a coalition of stakeholders committed to the project's success. Building on system dynamics models of stakeholder acceptance, the work reported here used case study and interview data to identify the fundamental elements of stakeholder relationships that are essential to building mutually beneficial relationships that ultimately lead to project success. These essential elements of stakeholder relationships combined with the physical structure of stakeholder acceptance identified by system dynamics models were used to develop a framework with which to effectively engage stakeholders to build and maintain project acceptance over the life of the project.