Collinge, W (2020) Stakeholder engagement in construction: Exploring corporate social responsibility, ethical behaviors, and practices. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 146(3): 04020003, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Stakeholder engagement is an undertheorized area of construction project management research. Often simplified as an act of corporate social responsibility, the complexity of the engagement concept means its processes and consequences evade closer scrutiny and analysis. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of stakeholder engagement to reveal its theoretical and practical complexity; two complimentary models of stakeholder engagement are mobilized to analyze empirical data from a hospital case-study project. The result is a retheorization of stakeholder engagement as a complex entwined process of responsibility, organizational action, and work package requirements where stakeholder engagement and agency (i.e., ethical treatment of stakeholders) are understood as separate variables that result in shifts among responsible, paternalistic, neoclassic, and strategic behaviors. The contribution lies in a more sophisticated understanding of stakeholder engagement being attained: shifts between stakeholder engagement and agency define relations between parties in corporate social responsibility (CSR) terms; the ethical aspirations of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) organizations are impacted by daily project activities; and the unique characteristics of stakeholder engagement in construction (e.g., binding of party interests, effect of subcontractor entry, and collective blame/praise) are brought into focus. Resulting recommendations include periodic review of engagement activity to ensure the CSR strategic objectives of organizations are aligned to stakeholder engagement work.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | corporate social responsibility; stakeholder engagement; stakeholder management; stakeholder theory |
| Index terms: | agency, stakeholder management, ethical behaviour, subcontractor, complexity, package, construction project management, stakeholder engagement, corporate social responsibility |
| Subjects: | systems engineering, sociology, project management theory and practice, health safety and environment, participation process, contractual arrangements, ethical issues, community and social dimensions, practitioner |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Project Management, Health and Safety, Procurement, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here