Stakeholders, issues and the shaping of large engineering projects

A critical element in the shaping of large engineering projects (LEPs) is associated with the multi-type and networked relationships between LEPs and their stakeholders in both market and nonmarket environments. In this paper, we advance a multidisciplinary network approach, namely Stakeholder Value Network (SVN), as a lens to examine, understand, model, and manage the stakeholder relationships in LEPs. The SVN approach brings together knowledge from three domains: engineering systems, organizational sociology, and strategic management. Specifically, we put the focus of this paper on exploring the underlying connections between stakeholders and issues; extending the methodological framework of “Stakeholder-based SVN” to “Issue-based SVN”; as well as testing three propositions about the strategic implications of Issue-based SVN and demonstrating the benefits of the integration of stakeholders and issues, through a retrospective case study of a large real-world engineering project, Project Phoenix.