Materials Today: Proceedings 21 (2020) 60–62

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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An empirical study on stakeholder management in construction projects

N.P. Srinivasan ⇑, S. Dhivya
Department of Civil Engineering, M.Kumarasamy College of Engineering, Karur, Tamilnadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The intent of this study is to analyze the various factors governing stakeholder management in construc-
Received 6 May 2019 tion projects. In general, the construction companies involving in major infrastructure projects mostly
Received in revised form 24 May 2019 tend to have a number of stakeholders. In such situations, managing the stakeholders and getting ade-
Accepted 30 May 2019
quate support from them becomes necessary. Therefore this paper made an empirical study on their
Available online 10 July 2019
management through questionnaire survey taken among various engineering and managerial personnel
(Project managers). This study identified the major factors influencing stakeholder management in con-
Keywords:
struction projects and analyzed them using Principal Component Analysis and Mean Score analysis by
Stakeholder management
Construction projects
frequency distribution method.
Questionnaire survey Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Principle component analysis Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Recent
Mean Score analysis Trends in Nanomaterials for Energy, Environmental and Engineering Applications.
Frequency distribution method

1. Introduction
Stakeholder management has grasped its attention in project
management literature when Freeman started introducing the
concept in his works ‘‘Strategic management: A Stakeholder
Approach”. Stakeholder management is considered as an impor-
tant issue to be monitored in project management, since a project
can be considered as a coalition of stakeholders to create a project
together. Freeman in his works defines project stakeholders as ‘‘a
person or a group of persons, who are influenced by or able to
influence the project”. The main participants in any construction
project coalition are clients, engineers and contractors. The interac-
tions and their interrelationships tied between those participants
determine the overall performance of a construction project. They
have an inevitable responsibility for delivering any project in a suc-
cessful manner.
ties (e.g. general public, local community, local authorities) [2].
In construction industry, there has been a strong emphasis on
the internal stakeholder relationship as procurement and project
management, whereas the external stakeholder relationships are
not up to significant extent as they have been considered as a task
of public officials who are going through the rules and legislations
that are concerned in facility development [4,6].
Getting continuous support from powerful stakeholders will
help to have more effective utilization of resources and thereby
making the project a grand success [1,3]. Good communication
with stakeholders as early and adequate manner will ensure effec-
tive support from stakeholders when necessary. Stakeholder based
approach helps in tracing the reaction of public and to plan the
actions so as to win people’s support [12].
2. Literature review

1.1. Stakeholder management
An effective stakeholder management will improve the quality
of the project. Stakeholders are of two categories namely, internal
stakeholders and external stakeholders; internal stakeholders
directly involve in organization’s decision-making process (e.g.
customers, owners, suppliers, employees) and the external stake-
holders are people who gets affected by the organization’s activi-
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: npscem14@gmail.com (N.P. Srinivasan).
The stakeholder decisions are not only for meant for framing
them but they need to be executed for getting desired results. A
mutual agreement and wide range of participation is required for
effective application of any decision. Stakeholder participation is
the next dimension of this effort to make any agreement to be exe-
cuted in a successful manner. Adequate stakeholder participation
will ensure a positive commitment between various personnel
involved in the project [9,11]. Such a manner, a project can be a
successful and can increase the performance after their exposure
and reach a creative. Mutual sharing approach enables the support
for shared demands and mutual relations among the business envi-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.05.361
2214-7853/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Recent Trends in Nanomaterials for Energy, Environmental and Engineering
Applications.
 N.P. Srinivasan, S. Dhivya / Materials Today: Proceedings 21 (2020) 60–62 61

ronment. Effective execution of framed organizational strategies 4.2. Reliability statistics

and their effectiveness in administration plays a major role in
improving organizational performance [5,8].
The key issue to be addressed in stakeholder management of
projects is identified as relationship management between the
team members of project and its stakeholders [10]. And it has been
cited as a critical success factor stakeholder management, although
verification is needed through further quantitative and qualitative
analysis [7]. The involvement of stakeholders is considered as an
important key factor in determining the project outcomes. The
clear understanding of the range of stakeholder reactions and their
behaviours by the project managers is needed. ‘Stakeholders’ reac-
tions to various strategies form a major role in decisions made by
the project managers regarding the strategies to face stakeholders
and their business [13]. A successful project manager should an
ability to understand the ‘‘invisible power” among stakeholders.
3. Research methodology
3.1. Objective
The main objective of this study is to identify the major factors
influencing the stakeholder management in construction projects.
3.2. Data collection
The data required for this study are collected from the propri-
etors, engineering and managerial personnel (Project managers)
involved in various construction projects. The questionnaire survey
method was carried out for data collection by preparing a ques-
tionnaire with two major parts namely demographic profile of
the respondents followed by different statements relating to the
factors influencing stakeholder management in construction pro-
jects. The respondents were provided with five point scale rating
system to share their views regarding stakeholder management
in construction projects.
The reliability of the data is analysed prior to the data analysis.
It is done using Cronbach’s alpha method which is considered to be
the most common method for testing reliability of the data under
consideration. The reliability analysis results gave an acceptable
level of internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha value of
0.843, as suggested by Nunnaly.
4.3. Principal component analysis
The Principal component analysis is a method of reducing the
factors from a larger set of data. The main aim of this analysis is
to explain maximum variance with very few numbers of principal
components. Before performing the analysis, sampling adequacy is
checked by using KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) measure of sampling
adequacy. The adequacy of sampling showed an acceptable value
of 0.745. Thus our data is considered to be suitable for reduction
through Barlett’s test of sphericity. The method of extraction tech-
nique was chosen as varimax method for rotation in principle com-
ponents analysis. The data obtained from Principal components
analysis is furnished in Table 1.
4.4. Mean score analysis
The mean score analysis has been carried out using frequency
distribution method of descriptive statistics for of the identified
major factors. The results of mean score analysis is furnished in
Table 2.
The results showed that the Organizational structure and Stake-
holder participation have highest mean score of 3.11 and 2.89 in
factors influencing the stakeholder management in construction
projects. It is then followed by Decision making powers (2.53),
Quality performance (2.44), Customer related factors (2.26) and
Employee related factors (2.08).

3.3. Descriptive statistics

Table 1
Principal Component Analysis.
The questionnaire was distributed among owners, engineering
and managerial personnel and the survey has been successfully Variables Eigen Percentage Cumulative
completed with 119 valid responses from different construction values variance Percentage
variance
projects carried out in and around Tamilnadu.
Stakeholder participation 5.438 18.108 18.108
Decision making powers 4.284 14.266 32.374
3.4. Factors considered for the study Organizational structure 2.318 7.728 40.099
Quality performance 1.753 5.837 45.936
Based on the literature findings and real-time observation, the Customer related factors 1.421 4.732 50.668
Employee related factors 1.217 4.052 54.720
following are the major factors identified to be in concern with var-
KMO Measures of Bartlett’s test of sphericity: Chi-Square
ious issues relating to stakeholder management in construction sampling Value: 1263.473
projects. Adequacy: 0.745

 Stakeholder participation
 Organizational structure
 Decision making powers
 Employee related factors Table 2
 Customer related factors Mean Score Analysis.
 Quality performance
Factors Mean Standard Co efficient
score deviation of variation
4. Data analysis
Decision making powers 2.53 0.685 0.342
Stakeholder participation 2.89 0.741 0.258
4.1. General Organizational structure 3.11 0.875 0.202
Quality performance 2.44 0.678 0.154
Customer related factors 2.26 0.687 0.204
The data collected through questionnaire survey are analyzed
Employee related factors 2.08 0.734 0.226
using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), a statistical
software tool for data analysis.
62 N.P. Srinivasan, S. Dhivya / Materials Today: Proceedings 21 (2020) 60–62
5. Conclusion
This study therefore identified the major factors concerned with
stakeholder management in construction projects as Stakeholder
participation, Decision making powers, Organizational structure,
Quality performance, Customer related factors and Employee
related factors. These factors are then analyzed for mean score
analysis using frequency distribution method of descriptive statis-
tics and the results revealed that organizational structure prevail-
ing in the organization and stakeholder participation have highest
mean scores when compared to other major factors like decision
making powers, quality performance, customer related factors
and employee related factors. Thus, organizational structure and
stakeholder participation prove to be highly viewed factors influ-
encing stakeholder management by engineering and managerial
personnel involved in construction projects.
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