Management of project stakeholders: facilitating project success in public sector projects in Nigeria

This research is based on evidences which show that project success in public sector construction projects in Nigeria is hindered by, among other issues, poor stakeholder management. As a result, the study involved the development of a conceptual model for effective stakeholder management. Using the conceptual model, empirical studies to establish the practice of stakeholder management in Nigerian public sector projects in four public universities as case studies were carried out. The resulting data were analysed, which revealed significant weaknesses in the practice of stakeholder management. These include lack of wide and deep knowledge/understanding of the concepts of project and stakeholder management by the clients’ project management teams (or research participants); non-existence of formal/systematic process of project stakeholder management; and poor system of project information/data management. Consequently, an integrated framework to ensure effective stakeholder management that would facilitate project success was developed. The integrated framework involves a seven-step stakeholder management process model, considering participants and their qualifications, techniques and outputs of the stakeholder management process and a system for project information/data management, across three-phase project life cycle. To ensure that the framework is practically applicable, it was evaluated by the expected beneficiaries of the framework and other experts familiar and involved with project and stakeholder management in the case studies, using questionnaire survey. The results of the evaluation show acceptability of the framework to effectively manage stakeholders and improve project success. However, while the framework may have been developed using data from selected universities, its principles may be applicable with prudence to other universities and other public sector projects. Further similar empirical studies using this approach or other suitable approaches in other universities and/or public sectors are required to generalise the findings and improve project success.