Forming relationships with stakeholders in engineering projects

For a project manager, it is vital to build good relations with the stakeholders who are identified as being most crucial in the project process and in using the final results of the project. The purpose of this paper is to study relationships in an engineering project setting; more specifically, the focus is on identifying the determining factors that form the relationship between the project and its stakeholders. This paper presents an empirical study based on in-depth interviews following a semistructured approach. Three engineering projects were studied in detail. Results from the current study identified five different types of relationships: classical market; through a third party; open and direct; integrated team; and partnering. Another finding indicates that five different factors have an impact on the formation of the project-stakeholder relationship: trust; uncertainty and control; culture and language; resources and knowledge; and goal congruence. [Received 15 May 2007; Revised 15 August 2007; Accepted 30 August 2007]