A CASE STUDY APPROACH TO MEGAPROJECT STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS THROUGH SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES

Megaproject is defined as a huge project characterized by high technical, organizational and managerial complexity involving a huge number of stakeholders with different interests. One of the major challenges in their management is the involvement of a lot of stakeholders leading to complex stakeholder interrelationships and conflicting interests. Despite the increasing importance that this topic is holding in literature, little or no attention has been paid to the real impacts stakeholders cause on megaproject performance. Framework for this research is developed within COST Action: Megaproject, Working group Managing External Stakeholders aiming to provide the mechanism how stakeholders influence impact megaproject performance. In order to succeed, the framework goes beyond the “iron-triangle” treating it as “side effect”, introducing sustainability issues as important aspects of megaproject impact. The model is used for identifying stakeholders’ impacts on the project and separating internal and external ones. Internal impacts are caused by the stakeholder directly on the process or on the final product, while external ones influence the economic, social and environmental aspects of a megaprojects. The research was conducted on four cases, two from the energy sector and two from the transportation sector, being each in a different European country, allowing the results to be considered as sufficiently general. Based on data on 52 stakeholders, research results comment on correlations of stakeholder business, social, political and legal power, interest, attitude and impact in terms of “iron triangle” components and sustainable principles.