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International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx – xxx
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Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept

‘shadows of the context’☆
Pernille Eskerod a,⁎, Tina Larsen b
a
Webster Vienna Private University, Business & Management Department, Palais Wenkheim, Praterstr. 23, A-1020 Vienna, Austria
b
Slagelse Municipality, Rådhuspladsen 11, DK-4200 Slagelse, Denmark

Received 25 January 2017; received in revised form 30 April 2017; accepted 2 May 2017
Available online xxxx

Abstract

The paper contributes to the theoretical debate on stakeholder management within project-oriented organizations. Despite acknowledging that
‘no project is an island’, project management theory (being originally a child of Scientific Management) has drawn on reductionism, i.e. the
practice of simplifying the description of a complex phenomenon in order to better grasp it. Project stakeholder management theory has been
heavily influenced by this approach, and the unintended consequence is that the simplicity of the stakeholder conceptualization makes it difficult
for project representatives to predict stakeholder behavior. In the paper, we suggest the concept ‘shadows of the context’ as a substitute for narrow
perceptions of ‘What's in it for me?’. Advantages and disadvantages of a reductionist approach versus the richer and more profound and holistic
‘shadows of the context’ approach within stakeholder analysis are discussed. The paper also celebrates Prof. J. Rodney Turner's significant
influences within the project management field.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd, APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Stakeholder theory; Stakeholder analysis; Scientific management; Stakeholder behavior; Reductionist approach; Shadows of the context

1. Executive summary the (conceptual) understanding of the stakeholders more than

A core idea within project stakeholder management is that the
people responsible for stakeholder management related to a
project – we can call them project representatives – can increase
the likelihood of project success (regardless of the measures for
success applied) by influencing the project stakeholders. The
more it is possible to understand the stakeholders, the easier it is
to perform effective project stakeholder management. This paper
claims, however, that the very concept of project management,
due to its origins within Scientific Management, is constraining
☆ Parts of this article were presented by the authors at the EURAM 2016
conference in Paris.
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: pernille.eskerod@webster.ac.at (P. Eskerod),
tina@goingforward.dk (T. Larsen).
necessary. The reason is that project management was built on
reductionism, i.e. an approach to simplify the description of a
complex phenomenon.
Based on literature reviews and logical deductions, this paper
contributes to the field by offering an alternative to a reductionist
approach to project stakeholder analysis. The concept ‘shadows
of the context’ is proposed. To better understand and predict
stakeholder behavior it is important to understand the
stakeholder's perceptions of the relevant past, present and future.
The concept encourages the project representative (as well as
researchers) to not limit their focus to the project as the unit of
analysis, i.e. accepting that ‘no project is an island’ when doing
project stakeholder analysis. Instead, they should look at the
project as embedded in the stakeholder's perception of experi-
ences (with the project representatives), the expectations of the
future, and other concurrent activities, relationships and networks
the stakeholder is involved in.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
0263-7863/00 © 2017 Elsevier Ltd, APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
2 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
Two methods to operationalize the concept ‘shadows of the
context’ are presented, i.e. ‘rich pictures’ method and systemic
constellation. The methods give the project representatives and
the project stakeholders a broader basis for communicating by
bringing more information into the conversation. In the ‘rich
pictures’ method, it is not only through spoken words but also
through colors, drawings and symbols. (Notice that instead of
talking about a real physical picture, the concept ‘rich pictures’
can also be thought of as a symbol of having a thorough data-set.)
Likewise, in the systemic constellations method, different
perspectives on the project or issue become visible, representing
the perceived reality of the stakeholder in question.
A warning is offered as the risk of using the concept
‘shadows of the context’ is that the project representatives get
paralyzed due to data-overflow, and thereby become worse off
compared to a situation where they used reductionist analysis
tools. A managerial implication of the research is therefore that
project representatives should be aware of the challenge of
finding the right balance between getting richer and more
profound and holistic insights on stakeholders and getting
paralyzed by data overflow.
In addition, the paper includes a tribute to IJPM's chief
editor, professor J. Rodney Turner.
2. A tribute to IJPM chief editor, Professor J. Rodney Turner
A core aim of this paper is to celebrate International Journal
of Project Management (IJPM)'s chief editor and prof. J. Rodney
Turner on his 65 years birthday. How could Rodney's birthday
be celebrated better than by pointing to the significant influences
he has had since many years – and still has – within the project
management research community through a festschrift on new
reflections related to the project-oriented organization?
It will take many papers to cover all influences, so therefore
we will concentrate on what we see as his core competencies,
and that is (1): His ability to identify the basic components of
concepts and logically deduct assumptions and implications. To
our understanding this is a core competence that all researchers
constantly should practice. We see this in many of Rodney's
publications, but most prominently in three IJPM editorials he
wrote back in 2006 (Turner, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c).
As a second competence, (2), we will point to Rodney's ability
and eagerness to take up new topics and thereby add to the
theoretical field and be valuable for many other researchers
within the project management community. Rodney explained it
himself on an occasion by pointing to the metaphor of a butterfly.
He saw himself as a butterfly interested in some types of flowers
for a while, but then after some years (or sometimes shorter)
being curious about and attracted by other flowers, and then
moving on to investigate the new flowers (or topics, if we
translate the metaphor). Through his long term engagement in
project management research, he has been able to cover a
considerable ‘number of flowers’ to the benefit of all of us. Not
least when he has chosen to reach out for theoretical frameworks
outside the project management field for inspiration. As an
example, we want to point to his article “Mechanisms of
Governance in the Project-based Organization: Roles of the
Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
Broker and Steward”, which he wrote with Dr. Anne Keegan
(Turner and Keegan, 2001).
As a third competence, (3), we will point to Rodney's ability
and willingness to participate in a high number of conferences
and other events year after year — and thereby meet numerous
people and build networks. Throughout the years, he has
encouraged and inspired an impressive number of junior and
senior researchers to write and submit papers — and to commit
to serve as guest editors. By this behavior, he has greatly
influenced the personal careers of many researchers, as well as
he has pushed the academic field forwards. I (Pernille) got for
example my very first journal publication (Eskerod, 1996) due
to Rodney's invitation to submit a paper to the International
Journal of Project Management, when he met me at my very
first presentation at an international conference. That was at
IPMA's (at that time called INTERNET) World Congress in
Oslo in June 1994. I was a PhD student then, and to understand
the significance of Rodney's influence, it is important to
remember that at this point in time it was common for PhD
students to produce monographs — and not journal articles as
today. Without Rodney's clear encouragement, this part of my
academic training and development may not have started until
years later, and it is with great pleasure I think back on all the
hard work of writing and editing the paper, followed by the joy
of seeing my research findings printed and published.
With these few words of appreciation of prof. J. Rodney
Turner's influence, we will now – and based on the inspirations
mentioned in the competence (1) above – dig into a core
concept of project management, i.e. the project stakeholders,
and aim to uncover some of the shortcomings of the way the
concept is treated in mainstream project management literature.
3. Introduction
A core idea within project stakeholder management is that the
people responsible for stakeholder management related to a
project – we can call them project representatives – can increase
the likelihood of project success (regardless of the measures for
success applied) by influencing the project stakeholders (see e.g.
Jepsen and Eskerod, 2009; PMI, 2013). A project stakeholder can
be defined as “any individual or group who can affect or be
affected by the project process or the project outcomes” (Eskerod,
2014, p. 43, building on Freeman, 1984; Andersen, 2008). The
stakeholders affect the project by contributing resources that are
needed by the project, e.g. financial resources, workhours,
expertise, approvals, reputation and compliance, i.e. no counter-
productive actions. Each stakeholder is assumed to have a free
will, that is, a power of choice (Barnard, 1938) on whether to
provide the needed contributions. Therefore, the project repre-
sentatives must try to figure out how they can make the
stakeholders provide their contributions.
Stakeholder behavior may be defined as the chosen action
taken towards the project by any individual or group who can
affect or be affected by the project process or the project
outcomes. It would be much easier to perform effective project
stakeholder management if it was possible to fully predict the
stakeholders' behaviors, i.e. having a certain answer to the
 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
question: “Will they contribute to the project as needed?” —
and as a subcategory of this question: “Will they refrain from
taking any actions against the project?”. Unfortunately, it seems
obvious that a full prediction will never be possible. Human
behavior is never entirely predictable, and there is typically
much we don't understand or know about the project
stakeholders (Eskerod and Jepsen, 2013). This is not surprising
to anybody doing research within social sciences. However, the
claim of this paper is that the very concept of project
management is constraining the (conceptual) understanding of
the stakeholders more than necessary. The reason is that project
management origins within Scientific Management were built
on reductionism, i.e. an approach to simplify the description of
a complex phenomenon in order to better grasp it, in order to
help the project manager (and other project representatives)
focus (Engwall, 2003). Rowley and Moldoveanu (2003) state
that the implicit assumption within stakeholder theory is that a
stakeholder group's interest intensity, i.e. the degree of
discontent or feeling of urgency, is the essential condition
underlying the stakeholder group's behavior. However, the
authors challenge this assumption and point to the fact that
behavior also could be identity-based, i.e. based on the
particular person's identity with a group, e.g. Greenpeace. If
a stakeholder's behavior is expected to only be interest-based,
i.e. reductionism is applied and only maximization of economic
utility is considered relevant, then the understanding of
expected behavior becomes too narrow and not useful for the
project representatives. In line with Rowley and Moldoveanu
(2003), other researchers (Jones and Wicks, 1999) suggest that
stakeholder theorizing should stop applying fixed assumptions
for motives and behavior – and instead see that the underlying
motives may be plenty, e.g. self-interest, identity, and trust, − and
variable, i.e. sometimes building on self-interest and sometimes
on other motives. In conclusion, treat behavior and motives as
variables. A new mindset for understanding and undertaking
stakeholder analysis is needed.
Building on the above, we suggest that a better understand-
ing of the motives and circumstances that affect and drive
the project stakeholders' behavior would be helpful. Not least
if they could be embraced by a unified concept that would
clearly communicate that it should be seen as an alternative to
the reductionistic approach. The purpose of this paper is to
enrich project management theory — namely project stake-
holder analysis, by addressing the following research question
(RQ):
How can stakeholder analysis be strengthened by adding a
unified concept that makes up for the shortcomings of the
reductionistic approach?
The concept should be able to embrace any motive and
circumstance that affect and drive stakeholder behavior. If an
answer to this question can be provided, we believe that it will be
possible for project representatives to make an analysis that can
better predict whether the stakeholders will be inclined to
contribute to the project or not — and also decide on how to
best interact with each of them. Despite being temporary
Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
3
organizations (Lundin and Söderholm, 1995; Burke and
Morley, 2016), projects still have to operate in a social context
with many cross-level linkages (Bakker, 2010) in order to
achieve results. The relationship between the project and its
stakeholder environment should therefore incorporate the con-
cept of embeddedness, where the project and stakeholders
continuously influence each other throughout the entire life of
the project (e.g. Blomquist and Packendorff, 1998; Johansson
et al., 2007). Especially the concept of contextual embeddedness
that covers the levels of organizational units, the entire
organization, networks and organizational fields and the concept
of social embeddedness, where the actions of stakeholders
depend on the structures of social systems and their interplay
(Sydow et al., 2004) suggests that a more holistic approach to
stakeholder issues is called for. This is not only relevant to
temporary organizations such as projects, but also to any other
organizational forms that need contributions from their stake-
holders. This paper therefore contributes to project stakeholder
analysis by calling for a more holistic approach when developing
future concepts of stakeholder analysis.
In the next section, the research methodology underlying the
paper is described. Hereafter, the theoretical framework is
presented. It is followed by a discussion section. Hereafter, a
conclusion is offered in which limitations and suggestions for
future research are stated.
4. Research methodology
The paper is based on literature reviews and logical
deductions. Established concepts from project management
literature as well as other theoretical fields are presented,
discussed and compared. The aim is to build a conceptual
framework that can help identify motives and circumstances
driving project stakeholder behavior.
As this study is conceptual in its nature, the theoretical
framework is based on research literature on stakeholders, human
behavior, and project management. Searches have been under-
taken through more of the academic databases and search
engines, e.g. EBSCO databases, ProQuest, Scopus, and Google
Scholar. In addition, publications by authors identified as
influential within the topic have been search through Social
Science Citation Index, ORCID and ResearchGate. The chosen
literature is used to identify origins, definitions and understand-
ings of relevant concepts, like e.g. the main concepts ‘shadow of
the future’ and ‘shadow of the past’ (which are presented in the
next section). The underlying aim was to make systematic and
objective searches of a range of sources to identify as many
relevant contributions as possible. Table 1 offers an overview of
the sources used. It can be seen that both PM and non-PM journal
articles and books have been used, and that they span a timeframe
of 1770–2017, with the period from the 1980s being the period
with the majority of publications on the subject.
As the paper is part of the festschrift for IJPM chief editor
and prof. J. Rodney Turner, various searches were also
undertaken to identify his numerous publications and their
influences.
4 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
Table 1
Overview of the sources used, classified as PM and non-PM journal articles and books.
Timeframe 1771–1780 1931–1940 1941–1950 1951–1960
Source category
PM journals – – – –
Non-PM journals – – – 1
PM books – – – –
Non-PM books 1 1 – –
5. Theoretical background
In this section, we examine and discuss relevant theoretical
concepts on stakeholder motives and behavior and also the
project as the unit of analysis presented in research literature.
Purposeful interaction with stakeholders is considered a core
task within project management (Littau et al., 2010; PMI, 2013;
Huemann et al., 2016) and has been so since Cleland (1985,
1986) on ongoing project evaluation as well as on project
stakeholder management.
The project stakeholders are important for project success for a
number of reasons, whereof four significant ones are: “First, the
project needs contributions (financial and non-financial) from
stakeholders; second, stakeholders often establish the criteria for
assessing the success of the project; third, stakeholders'
(potential) resistance may cause various risks — and negatively
affect the success of the project; and fourth, the project may affect
stakeholders in both negative and positive ways” (Eskerod et al.,
2015b, p. 6). Examples of non-financial contributions are
manpower, expertise, decision making, good ideas, compliance
with plans already agreed upon, and usage of project deliverables
as intended. Refraining from taking actions adverse to the project
can also be seen as a non-financial contribution. In other words,
the concept “contribution” is understood in broad terms, meaning
any input that could be ascribable to the stakeholders. This is in
line with Post et al. (2002) who determine stakeholders of a firm
as “individuals and constituencies that contribute, either volun-
tarily or involuntarily, to its wealth-creating capacity and
activities, and who are therefore its potential beneficiaries and/
or risk bearers.” They are seen as those who supply critical
resources, place something of value “at risk,” and have sufficient
power to affect its performance (p. 8).
5.1. Theorizing about stakeholder behavior
As mentioned earlier, the project needs contributions from the
project stakeholders in order for the project representatives to
accomplish it (Freeman, 1984; Eskerod et al., 2015a). It makes
good sense to see the relationship between each stakeholder and
the project as a series of exchange processes in which both parties
give and take. The stakeholder and the project representative, e.g.
the project manager, both have a ‘power of choice’ (Barnard, 1938
[1974], p. 13) and can therefore decide whether they want to take
part (or continue to take part) in the processes or not. Stakeholders
can provide, withhold, or withdraw their contributions — and
thereby they potentially represent a threat as well as an
opportunity for the project (Slatter, 1980), whereas the project
Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
1961–1970 1971–1980 1981–1990 1991–2000 2001–2010 2011–2017
– – 2 1 7 8
– 1 2 11 13 6
– – 1 2 2 6
– – 3 4 1 1
representatives (in the ideal world) can decide whether or not
to provide aimed-for benefits to the stakeholder (Eskerod and
Jepsen, 2013).
Classical economic theory (Smith, 1776) claims that the
stakeholders (as well as the project representatives) will continue
the exchange processes, if they perceive this to be in their
self-interest. With a popular phrase, they will ask: ‘What's in it
for me?’. Contributing to the project will take place, if the
benefits from contributing are perceived to be equal to or exceed
the costs of doing so, and at the same time the stakeholders (and
the project representatives) will try to maximize their own
benefits. Return-on-investments for investors; payment and
renewed contracts for suppliers; salary, interesting tasks, and
career opportunities for the project team members; and a new and
better product for the customer are examples of stakeholder
benefits.
Unfortunately, projects may also involve negative side
effects (which we can call disbenefits) that may discourage
stakeholders from contributing to the project. Examples are
fewer resources available for competing projects; noise from
the construction site for the neighbors; stress and burn-outs for
the project team members in an over-demanding project
environment; and environmental damages.
When stakeholders pursue their self-interests “What's in it for
me?”, we say that they follow a ‘logic of consequentiality’ (March
and Heath, 1994). This means that “they act according to
expected consequencesof contributing and whether they believe
that these consequences will maximize their self-interests”
(Eskerod and Jepsen, 2013, p. 18). This is what Rowley and
Moldoveanu (2003) call an interest-based perspective.
An alternative to the ‘logic of consequentiality’ is the ‘logic
of appropriateness’ (Cyert and March, 1992; March and Heath,
1994). This concept states that a stakeholder's behavior will be
motivated by the stakeholder's understanding of ‘what a person
like me would do in a situation like this’. This is what Rowley
and Moldoveanu (2003) call an identity-based perspective. The
implication is that we can expect that each stakeholder will act
in a way that he or she believes will preserve his/her social
identity.
Even though the concepts ‘logic of consequentiality’ and
‘logic of appropriateness’ may appear to have good explanation
power on motives and circumstances driving stakeholder
behavior, research shows that they cannot fully explain or predict
a person's behavior (Eskerod and Jepsen, 2013). Newer theory on
organizational behavior suggests that individuals consider
fairness of treatment in their relationships as an influencing
factor in its own right (Bosse et al., 2009). In order for a treatment
 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
to be deemed fair, fairness should be perceived by the
stakeholders to exist in three dimensions: (1) distribution of
benefits among the parties involved (which may include more
than the parties in a dual relationship, e.g. other stakeholders
affected), (2) procedures, and (3) ways of interacting. The claim
is that stakeholders will refrain from pursuing to maximize their
self-interest if they perceive fairness to be present (Bosse et al.,
2009). In such a case, they will settle for benefits that are ‘good
enough’, i.e. ‘satisficing’ in Simon's (1956) terminology (i.e. a
combination of satisfy and suffice as an alternative to maximizing
interests). An important part of the theory is the claim that
fairness will be judged over long periods of time (Bosse et al.,
2009). This also relates to Missonier and Loufrani-Fedida (2014)
who point to the dynamic and emergent nature of the
relationships between stakeholders during the project.
5.2. Theorizing about projects
Because project management theory has its origins within
Scientific Management, it was originally built on reductionism,
meaning that the project was “nothing but” a temporary
endeavor — with tasks to be planned, organized, directed,
and controlled (Engwall, 1995). As Engwall (2003) says,
“Limited attention has been paid to structures and procedures
spanning over successive projects. The project as a unit of
analysis has been conceptualized as a lonely phenomenon, with
neither history nor future” (p. 793). In this sense, each project
has traditionally been understood as “being done for the first
time or with procedures that are being altered” (Graham, 1985,
p. 2, as cited in Engwall, 2003). Engwall (2003) argues that a
major pitfall within the project management literature is that
projects conceptually are perceived as different from
non-project activities. Therefore “procedures and techniques
applied in empirical projects are seldom discussed in relation to
surrounding organizational structures and routines” (p. 793),
i.e. taking the nature of e.g. a project-based organization with
its mechanisms of project governance (see e.g. Turner, 2006b;
Turner and Keegan, 2001) into account.
In addition, Engwall (2003) states that “.. in order to
understand the inner life of a project in depth, it also needs to
be analyzed in relation to (1) experiences from past activities;
(2) politics during the pre-project phases; (3) parallel courses of
events happening during project execution; (4) ideas about the
post-project future; and (5) institutionalized norms, values and
routines of the project's organizational context” (p. 791). This
points to the importance of not seeing the project as a unit of
analysis isolated from the environment and from the time-related
contexts, i.e. (past, present and future), that the project has to
operate in (as discussed in a recent debate by e.g. Dille and
Söderlund, 2011, 2013; Granqvist and Gustafsson, 2016;
Tukiainen and Granqvist, 2016). This has consequences for the
stakeholder analysis.
A similar perspective may be found in contingency theory
that claims that the best way to organize depends on the nature
of the environment to which the organization must relate (Scott,
1981). However, the focus in contingency theory is more on
management style and organizational structure (structural
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5
contingency theory) influenced by various aspects of the
environment (contingency factors) than on stakeholders.
6. Analysis and discussion
6.1. A unifying concept
Stakeholder research has been approached from different
viewpoints or perspectives. One research avenue takes its
perspective from the point of the focal organization and
deals with the identification of important stakeholder groups
(e.g. Preston, 1989; Savage et al., 1991; Agle et al., 1999;
Frooman, 1999) and on strategies and activities for managing
stakeholders (e.g. Cummings and Doh, 2000; Frooman and
Murrell, 2005). Another research avenue takes the perspective of
stakeholders and has focused on the determinants and mobiliza-
tion likelihood of stakeholders motivated by protection of
interests and/or expression of identity (e.g. Rowley and
Moldoveanu, 2003) and path dependency on initial conditions
that influence stakeholders and that are accentuated by the
sequence of actions, networks and prior commitments (Lamberg
et al., 2008). These perspectives address past and present
conditions that influence stakeholder relationships. Research
also shows how stakeholders' influence strategies vary along the
project lifecycle (Aaltonen and Kujala, 2010), implying that
stakeholder management should be regarded as a dynamic
process as stakeholder interactions also take place in the future.
Together, the mentioned perspectives in literature show that
motives and circumstances that affect stakeholder behavior
change over time — that is past, present and future. A more
holistic approach to stakeholder analysis that takes all contextual
factors into consideration is therefore called for.
The above mentioned fragments of contemporary publica-
tions related to stakeholders and stakeholder management
within projects, make us claim that the mainstream understand-
ing of project stakeholder management builds on reductionism,
meaning that stakeholder behavior is seen as guided by
“nothing but” rational, cognitive considerations about “What's
in it for me?” and “Is it fair – in terms of benefit distribution,
procedures, and ways of interaction?” — pointing to the ‘here
and now’ in the particular project only. This is caused by the
fact that the individual project is the dominant unit of analysis
within project management. Only few publications, like e.g.
Blomquist and Packendorff (1998), Engwall (2003) and
Eskerod (2017) state that this is too narrow a perspective, and
that the contexts (incl. the temporal context) and environments
the project operates in, also have to be considered. Based on
these deductions, our claim is that a project stakeholder's
behavior cannot be deeply understood or predicted without
taking the history, the present, and the expectations of the
future into account. New research within project stakeholder
management that takes a broader view is for example presented
by Beringer et al. (2013) who have studied the behavior of
internal stakeholders in project portfolio management and its
impact on success, and Aaltonen et al. (2015) who make a
thorough analysis of the stakeholder dynamics of stakeholders
in the local society, in the project front-end of two nuclear
6 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
waste repository projects. Axelrod (1984) has (based on models
for cooperative behavior within game theory) argued that the
“shadow of the future”, i.e. expectations of future interactions,
is a central factor influencing the current interaction, when two
parties are interacting. A number of authors (e.g. Noordewier et
al., 1990; Heide and Miner, 1992; Parkhe, 1993; Skaperdas and
Syropoulos, 1996; Fearon, 1998) have based their empirical
research on performance effects in inter-firm relations on the
concept of shadow of the future, and Batenburg et al. (2003)
illustrate the use of the concept when they claim that “The
contractual behavior of firms depends not only on character-
istics of transactions but also on prior and expected future
business contacts between the contracting parties” (p. 136).
Relating to both the concept of shadow of the future and the
previously mentioned perceived fairness of treatment, Deng et al.
(2013) state that perception of future fairness of treatment can
potentially influence stakeholder involvement. The authors
studied companies undergoing acquisitions, while looking at the
role of stakeholders. They found that acquisitions by companies
with a high corporate social responsibility are more likely to
maximize stakeholder value. The reason, the authors claim, is that
such companies are more likely to honor implicit contracts as well
as to offer continuity to existing stakeholders. This ensures a
smooth transition and keeps the stakeholders motivated and
involved. Thereby, future success will be maximized and the
shareholders will ultimately benefit from it (Deng et al., 2013).
In the same line, the concept “shadow of the past” has been
used in research on contractual management within inter-firm
relations (see e.g. Lyons, 1994; Gulati, 1995). Poppo et al. (2008)
propose an interdependence perspective on the “shadow of the
past” and the “shadow of the future” as an alternative origin to
inter-organizational trust. Further, the concept “shadow of the
present” (Eskerod, 2017) has also been suggested as a means to
better understand a person's behavior. ‘Shadow of the present’ is
here defined as “the perception of concurrent possibilities and
threats as well as the networks the stakeholder is involved in”
(Eskerod, 2017, p. 174).
As the perspectives in the presented literature shows, the past,
present and future are inextricably intertwined when it comes to
stakeholders. In order to understand project stakeholder motiva-
tions and behaviors better, we therefore claim that the stakeholder
analysis needs to provide richer and more profound and holistic
insights on the stakeholders. This could be done by letting the
stakeholder analysis include analysis of the stakeholder's
perceptions and interpretations of the past, i.e. ‘shadow of the
past’, perception of the stakeholder's possibilities, threats and
networks, i.e. ‘shadow of the present’, and expectations to the
future, i.e. ‘shadow of the future’. We suggest that these three
concepts add up to the unified concept we call ‘shadows of the
context’. By ‘shadows of the context’ we mean any circumstance
that may affect or drive stakeholder behavior, whether this stems
from issues related to perception of the past, perception of the
present, or expectations of the future.
This makes us propose:
Proposition 1. Project representatives that take in to account
that stakeholders' behavior is influenced by ‘shadows of the
Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
context’, will be more likely to predict stakeholder behavior in
terms of likelihood of getting needed stakeholder contributions.
6.2. Operationalization of the concept
For project representatives to work with the concept
‘shadows of the context’ it is important to incorporate new
methods in the stakeholder analysis on top of traditional ones
(see e.g. Jepsen and Eskerod, 2009). These methods must
reflect the ‘richness’ sought when it comes to insights on the
stakeholders, i.e. a more holistic, detailed and profound view.
Walker et al. (2014) propose that stakeholder voices can be
heard through the construction of so-called ‘rich pictures’. This
is also an approach used by Doloi (2011) in regards to
understanding stakeholders' perspective of cost estimation in
project management. The research concerns identifying the
underlying issues associated mainly with the perception of
board stakeholders involved over the entire lifecycle of
projects. By ‘rich pictures’ is meant that pictures with an
artistic and cultural flow of colors, diagrams and symbols to
better communicate with the stakeholders are produced.
Originally the rich picture concept was developed by Peter
Checkland and co-authors within the Soft Systems Methodology
(SSM) (see e.g. Checkland, 1999; Checkland and Winter, 2006),
and more researchers have adopted it (e.g. Steinfort, 2010;
Steinfort and Walker, 2011; Walker and Steinfort, 2013).
Another method to generate more holistic, profound and
richer insights is the systemic constellation approach as
suggested by Huemann et al. (2016) that uses space and
direction of attention as a means or a language to produce
viable descriptions and models of reality. This is done by
charting a spatial representation of stakeholder relationships in
a social system. The systemic constellation approach has its
roots in family therapy and psychology where different
approaches have been developed over time (see e.g. Kopp
and Martinuzzi, 2013; Varga von Kibéd and Sparrer, 2011;
Weber and Schäffer, 2000). Systemic constellations have been
introduced into the organizational context in order to identify
and deal with the complexity and dynamics of organizations
(Königwieser and Hillebrand, 2005). The advantage of the
method is that sensitive and implicit knowledge becomes
explicit in order to support problem solving. Also, it is possible
to try out solutions and test their impact.
These concepts are very relevant for the stakeholder
(analysis) approach we suggest in this paper. The ‘rich pictures’
and ‘systemic constellations’ methods give the project repre-
sentatives and the project stakeholders a broader basis for
communicating by bringing more information into the conver-
sation. In the ‘rich pictures’ method, it is not only through
spoken words but also through colors, drawings and symbols.
Instead of talking about a real physical picture, the concept ‘rich
pictures’ can also be thought of as a symbol of having a
thorough data-set. Likewise, in the systemic constellations
method, different perspectives on the project or issue become
visible, representing the perceived reality of the stakeholder
group in question. Thereby it becomes clear that a stakeholder
analysis relying on ‘shadows of the context’ instead of only the
 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
classical elements in the form of ‘logic of consequentiality’ and
‘perception of fairness’, will produce a much more complex
dataset on the stakeholder's motivations and behaviors, i.e. by
way of a ‘rich picture’ or a systemic constellation.
What seems to be lacking at present in literature on
stakeholders, human behavior and project management are
more methods to determine and therefore also to operationalize
‘the shadows of the context’. We have identified and presented
the ‘rich pictures’ method and the systemic constellation
method but more experience with these methods is necessary.
Also, more methods that address ‘the shadows of the context’
should be developed for the practitioners' tool kit, in order to
determine and secure stakeholder fulfillment of project needs.
The advantages and disadvantages of stakeholder analysis are
summarized in Table 2 below.
The key contribution of ‘the shadows of the context’ concept
is to point out the need to abandon the reductionist approach to
project stakeholders and adopt a more holistic approach to
stakeholder analysis. In other words, a change of mindset is
needed that starts with a greater awareness of the different
stakeholders' perspectives that cannot be disclosed by solely
relying on reductionist approaches to stakeholder analysis. The
project representatives do not know everything about its
stakeholders' past, present or future that may influence the
project. A state of information asymmetry is present where the
individual stakeholder alone knows his/her position in regards
to the project and its other stakeholders. This information
cannot altogether be disclosed through a reductionist approach,
as these methods focus on specific parameters and in doing so,
they tend exclude other historical information about the
stakeholder that may be much more relevant to determine the
appropriate course of action for the project. The implications
for further research and the way forward seems to be to attempt
to engage the stakeholders themselves to determine their
positions in the stakeholder picture or stakeholder space in
order to identify possible courses of action.
7. Conclusion
In sum, this paper is advancing theorizing about project
stakeholders by means of a literature review within organizational
Table 2
Advantages and disadvantages of reductionism versus ‘shadows of the context’.
Stakeholder analysis based on
Reductionism
Advantages Keeps the parties focused on few parameters — and therefore doesn't
overburden our cognitive capacity and risk paralyzing us.
To do the stakeholder analysis is not so time consuming because only
a few parameters are included.
Disadvantages Gives us a picture that is too simple and therefore not helpful for Challenges our cognitive capacity to deal with the complexity of the motives
sufficiently predicting the stakeholder's coming behavior.
If the project representatives don't perceive the stakeholder analysis as The project representatives need to learn new tools to create the richer
helpful, they may have very limited motivation to undertake it carefully. pictures.
Please cite this article as: P. Eskerod, T. Larsen, 2017. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context’, Int. J. Proj. Manag. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.05.003
7
behavior theory, stakeholder theory and project theory, and logical
deductions. The aim of the theoretical inputs is to make it more
likely to predict stakeholder behavior, or at least be prepared for
more potential behaviors from the stakeholder, than when only
using a reductionist approach.
The answer to the RQ: How can stakeholder analysis be
strengthened by adding a unified concept that makes up for the
shortcomings of the reductionistic approach? can be summa-
rized as follows: According to organizational behavior theory,
stakeholder behavior (in terms of contributing financial and
non-financial resources as needed by the project) is driven by
the motive ‘logic of consequentiality’, meaning that the
stakeholder will contribute if he or she expects that the
consequences of contributing are positive and that these
consequences will maximize his/her self-interest. In addition
to this motive and according to literature, another motive, ‘logic
of appropriateness’, may also be relevant. This motive concerns
the stakeholder's self-interest in preserving his or her social
identity. The behavior will be influenced by the stakeholder's
understanding of ‘what a person like me would do in a situation
like this’. Therefore, the stakeholder may contribute to the
project even though the benefits on the surface don't equal or
exceed the costs. Finally, the stakeholder's behavior is driven
by the ‘perception of fairness’, meaning that if the following
three dimensions are perceived to be fair by the stakeholder,
(1) distribution of benefits among the parties involved,
(2) procedures, and (3) ways of interacting, then the stakeholder
will contribute financial and non-financial resources to the
extent that the benefits are ‘good enough’ but not necessarily
are ones that maximize the stakeholder's interests.
Extending the perspective on the project to not only focus on
the project as the unit of analysis, i.e. accepting that ‘no project
is an island’, but instead to look at the project as embedded in
the stakeholder's perception of experiences in the relationship
with the project representatives, the expectations of the future,
and other concurrent activities, relationships and networks the
stakeholder is involved in, makes us propose the concept
‘shadows of the context’ for the stakeholder analysis. This
means that to predict stakeholder behavior it is important to
understand the stakeholder's perceptions of the relevant past,
present and future. This can be done by e.g. creating ‘rich
Shadows of the context
Gives a richer, more holistic and profound insights and is therefore helpful
for predicting the stakeholder's coming behavior.
If circumstances are changing during the course of the project, the detailed
understanding and communication between the stakeholder in question and
the project representatives may be helpful for an appropriate response.
and circumstances influencing stakeholder's behavior — and increases the risk
of paralyzing.
The process of creating richer insights requires efforts from both the project
representatives and the stakeholder, and it may be very time consuming.
8 P. Eskerod, T. Larsen / International Journal of Project Management xx (2017) xxx–xxx
pictures’ of the stakeholder or a systemic constellation in the
stakeholder analysis. The risk of considering ‘shadows of the
context’ in order to achieve richer insights on stakeholders is
that the project representatives that are supposed to interact
with the stakeholder get paralyzed due to data-overflow, and
thereby become worse off compared to a situation where they
used reductionist analysis tools, such as ‘What's in it for me?’
seen in a narrow way from the perspective of the stakeholder. A
managerial implication of the research is therefore that project
representatives doing stakeholder management (and stakeholder
analysis as part of it) should be aware of the challenge of finding
the right balance between getting richer and more profound and
holistic insights on stakeholders and getting paralyzed by data
overflow.
A limitation to this research is that at present it solely draws
on inputs identified in literature on stakeholders, human
behavior, and project management as well as on logical
deductions. The identified literature offers only few methods
that are helpful to determine the ‘shadows of the context’,
among these are ‘rich pictures’ method and systemic constel-
lations method. The identified literature does, however, support
our claims on the limitations of the reductionist approach and in
doing so, the need for other approaches to predict stakeholder
behavior in terms of the stakeholder's willingness and ability to
fulfill the project's needs for contributions from the particular
stakeholder. The way forward is to provide empirical evidence
to test and support our proposition mentioned above. This
would also provide the opportunity to uncover and establish
categories of the ‘shadows of the context’ in more detail.
In future research it could also be interesting to draw on
inputs from systemic theory in order to further develop
the dimensions of ‘shadows of the context’. This will also
develop the practitioner's tool kit by providing new methods
to determine stakeholder and contextual factors that may
affect the project and how to deal with them. In doing so,
the aim is to uncover ‘the shadows of the context’ in order to
better be able to align stakeholder behavior with the project
needs.
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