Business & Sustainability
1. Introduction
1.1 Stakeholder discrepancies in Project management
The success of the project vastly depends on how the project managers analytically and intuitively identify key stakeholders (Bourne & Walker, 2005) and work with them to frame their expectations and influence upon the overall project outcome (Golob & Podnar, 2014;
Hörisch et al., 2014; Moriarty, 2014; Ni et al., 2014). In this context, a stakeholder is someone affected by a project and having a right to influence its outcome by any means (Cobb, 2012). Bourne and Walker (2005) have argued that successful completion of project deliverables is critically dependent on the need to achieve the project objectives that fully address stakeholder expectations all through the project lifecycle, whereas stakeholders are also considered asset to the project resource-base (Retolaza et al., 2014;
Scheer et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2014). However, conflicting range of needs and wishes among the project stakeholders is proved to be a fundamental challenge for the project managers (Adderley & Mellor, 2014; Alladi & Vadari, 2011).
The ability to recognize the influence of various stakeholders is a significant skill for successful project managers (Chakhar & Saad, 2014; Garriga, 2014; Bourne & Walker, 2005), however without consideration to the conflicting needs and expectations of a diverse range of project stakeholders at various project phases (Golob & Podnar, 2014; Hörisch et al., 2014), a project will not be considered sustainable despite the fulfillment of time, budget and scope – commonly known as the “iron triangle” of any project (Bourne & Walker, 2005). The multi-stakeholder perspective is often deemed as the sustainable perspective for the project management (Silvius et al., 2012), nevertheless the underpinning conflicts among the project stakeholders inevitably exist with due scale and scope – tackling which determines the project success end of the day (Retolaza et al., 2014; Scheer et al., 2014).
1.2 Theoretically how this conflicting scenario can be understood?
Fig. 1: Stakeholder Model (Source: Bourne & Walker, 2005)
As per the figure 1, the stakeholder orientation of project management is positioned in order to view the possible conflicting scenarios from the project management set-ups and in the eyes of a project manager (Bourne & Walker, 2005). Herein, a conflict is a construction and composition of the project interface (Grossman, 2001) visualized by the project manager in one context and captured otherwise by the project team internally and externally in another context depending on the internality and externality background and several varied constructions of stakeholders of several typed and tycoons (Adderley & Mellor, 2014; Alladi
& Vadari, 2011; Retolaza et al., 2014; Scheer et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2014). “Management for stakeholders” perspective as elucidated by Eskerod and Huemann (2013) delineates the focus on the stakeholders scoping out the underlying conflicts among them in order to device the project management strategies to cope up with them and thus accommodating a balanced approach eventually (Golob & Podnar, 2014; Hörisch et al., 2014; Moriarty, 2014).
In line with this, strategic CSR window of opportunity reflects the balance of economic value and social value (Werther & Chandler, 2011), which is instrumental for the project managers to focus upon by balancing the requirements of both the economic stakeholders and social stakeholders in an effective way (Retolaza et al., 2014; Scheer et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2014).
This avoids the CSR deficit (Werther & Chandler, 2011) which is caused in more conflicting and imbalanced situations among the economic and social stakeholders with an array of non- aligned influences and demands (Golob & Podnar, 2014; Hörisch et al., 2014) creating a conflicting obstacle for sustainable project management (Silvius et al., 2012).
Fig. 2: Stakeholder conflict through LMX (Source: Own illustration)
Depicting the broader instrumental approach of leadership (Northhouse, 2013) and focusing on the part of influences and interactions among project leaders and stakeholders (Adderley
& Mellor, 2014; Alladi & Vadari, 2011) in their dyadic relationships, the Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory as proposed by Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) relates to the context of in-group and out-group stakeholders of the project. This naturally entails the higher amount of intimacy of the closer stakeholder group and lower amount of engagement of the outer stakeholder group in the project management scenario resulting in a conflicting gap (Ni et al., 2014; Oriordan & Fairbrass, 2014). In this context as per the figure 2, thus stakeholders in the in-group receive more information, influence and confidence from the project team than that of the out-group stakeholders (Northhouse, 2013). Ensuring high quality leader-member exchanges (Northhouse, 2013) will avoid stakeholder conflicts building effective dyads and network partnerships throughout the project life-cycle (Cobb, 2012; Tolbert & Hall, 2009).
The studies of Graen and Uhl-Bien as elucidated by Northhouse (2013) are quite relevant for project management which suggests leaderships making in three progressive stages: (1) the stranger phase – with lower quality LMX exchanges and self-interested actions / performances of stakeholders, (2) the acquaintance phase – with medium quality LMX exchanges and room for more roles, responsibilities and challenges for stakeholders, and (3) the mature partnership phase – with high quality LMX exchanges and effective dependencies with the stakeholders of the project – in order to understand the progressive conflict stages amongst the project stakeholders as well (Carlon & Downs, 2014; Chakhar & Saad, 2014;
Garriga, 2014).
In this stakeholder management and project leadership context (Cobb, 2012; Silvius et al., 2012; Werther & Chandler, 2011), the understanding of the construction and composition of conflict based on the internalities and externalities become instrumental (Scheer et al., 2014;
Yang et al., 2014). Having said that, the conceptualizations of unexpected events essentially constitute conflicts among the project stakeholders, whereas these constructions do not actively take a posture on whether the occurrence was sudden to all project team members or merely to some (Tukiainen et al., 2010). Expectations toward the folk and peers in the project
management landscape and what amount of goodwill received or shared at what particular time cater to the ignition of conflict which Tukiainen et al. (2010) have produced as
“unexpected dynamic events” those emerge, evolve and change during the project lifespan.
With this evolutionary, emerging and changing properties of conflicts in the project management context (Tukiainen et al., 2010), therefore understanding the different set-ups of conflict also becomes significant for the sustainable project management (Adderley &
Mellor, 2014; Ayuso et al., 2014; Carlon & Downs, 2014; Chakhar & Saad, 2014; Garriga, 2014; Golob & Podnar, 2014; Hörisch et al., 2014; Moriarty, 2014; Ni et al., 2014; Oriordan
& Fairbrass, 2014; Retolaza et al., 2014; Scheer et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2014).
1.3 Research gap in understanding the types of conflicts among project stakeholders
In line with this aforementioned quest, a fundamental question that arises is what the contemporary research has to say about the greater typology, categorization and classification of conflicts relevant to the project management domain holistically?
Okoye et al. (2013) have examined the nexus of corporate disclosure of social performance on corporate stakeholder conflict management where stakeholder groups represent divergent interests in the activities of any corporation. Thus it was perceived that managing social stakeholder needs is crucial in sustaining a long-term relationship between management and stakeholder groups establishing the critical link between the three constructs of sustainability, i.e. social and economic performance relationship; social and environmental performance relationship and environmental and economic performance relationship (Okoye et al., 2013).
In this context, Zietsma and Winn (2008) have deepened the understanding of the processes and specific actions aimed at influencing and shaping business practices through dynamic stakeholder relationships building elaborative influence chains and worked to direct influence flows. Zietsma and Winn (2008) have offered a refined understanding of both bilateral and mutual-influence tactics in the context of conflict management through bilateral relationships, and highlighting the use of dependence relationships among multiple embedded organizations to build influence over a specific target, and more generally, an organizational field which is encircled by its key stakeholders – the organizational employees (Zietsma &
Winn, 2008).
Stakeholder negotiation processes, on the contrary become difficult due to values differences among stakeholders as defended by Crow and Baysha (2013). These values can be reflected in the language used by stakeholders leading to conflict in negotiation processes perceiving a higher degree of miscommunication in stakeholder negotiations (Crow & Baysha, 2013).
Thus clarity of language and transparent discussion of key value-representative terms may lead to stakeholder negotiations involving minority stakeholders with more aware of values and language differences than their majority counterparts researched by Crow and Baysha (2013).
As different stakeholders have different levels and types of interest in projects and can be seen as multiple clients or customers for the project in which they are involved, Newcombe (2003) has argued that the concept of client is now obsolete and is being replaced by the reality of project stakeholders demonstrating the importance to project managers of conducting the analysis of the power, predictability and interest of key project stakeholders (Newcombe, 2003). According to the research of Newcombe (2003), contemporary management theory focuses the role of stakeholders as major players in organizational dynamics via a pluralistic view of the identity of those who have an investment and an interest in an organization, whereas the concept of stakeholders has been applied to projects in general but has not that extensively to deal with the conflict categories of project management (Newcombe, 2003). This entails an interesting research gap in understanding the typology, categorization and classification of conflicts relevant to the project management domain.
Rogan (2006) sought to extend existing research on framing conflict categories by exploring the number and types of frames individuals use to describe their conflict events with an assessment of the relationship among the frames suggesting that particular frames dominate individuals’ descriptions, while significant differences were also found between males’ and females’ use of certain frames in conflict management (Rogan, 2006). Accordingly, Bhadra (2013) focused upon the concept of stakeholder theory and integrated corporate social responsibility in operational risk management approach and in a value creation approach respectively in reactive way and in proactive way to deal critical conflicting scenarios in organizations in a Conflict-Consensus-Collaboration context leading to more chances of replicating the concept in the domain of project management through further research (Bhadra, 2013).
Cuppen (2012) interestingly elaborated on diversity as recognized as a key issue for learning in stakeholder dialogue which entails the articulation of a diversity of perspectives and the confrontation of claims and ideas pointing out constructive conflict as a new phenomenon but not in the context of project management. In line with this, Wang et al. (2009) have identified that everyone involved in the project brings different requirements, which should be satisfied on the premise that project should be accomplished successfully offering for more focus in project management academic field that how to deal with conflicts from different stakeholders’ conflicts in categorical manner (Wang et al., 2009).
Mainardes et al. (2012) defended that mutual influence and participation were found to be important in explaining the organization and stakeholder relationship where just like simplifying stakeholder classification and in explaining the relationships between parties, it has found out to be interesting to further simplify the conflict categories in a project management organizational context. In this context, it is correspondingly necessary to target research on aspects such as conflicts of interest between stakeholders and management in coping with multiple objectives of the projects (Mainardes & Raposo, 2011).
Carney et al. (2011) have furthermore pointed out that the stakeholder management literature is dominated by the ‘shareholder value’ and ‘inclusive stakeholder’ views of the corporation focusing on inter-functional conflicts between stakeholder groups, e.g. between investors and managers or managers and employees with an idealized corporate structure. It is characterized by the separation of ownership from management, while the modality of conflict varies by system; substantial intra-functional conflict is endemic to each. Carney et al. (2011) critically uplifted the intra-stakeholder type of conflict in various organizations and provide a basis for understanding their various manifestations and consequences under the different systems of governance lacking the context of project management approach clearly subjects to further research (Carney et al., 2011).
Having said this, such different phenomena of stakeholder-centric constructions and compositions of conflicts pose an interesting research exploration into the project management landscape and contemporary literatures laying the foundation for prototyping the potential typology of conflicts from multifaceted perspectives (Adderley & Mellor, 2014;
Ayuso et al., 2014; Carlon & Downs, 2014; Chakhar & Saad, 2014; Garriga, 2014; Golob &
Podnar, 2014; Hörisch et al., 2014; Moriarty, 2014; Ni et al., 2014; Oriordan & Fairbrass, 2014; Retolaza et al., 2014; Scheer et al., 2014; Yang et al., 2014). The problem formulation thus depicts the clear-cut research gap in understanding the typology, categorization and classification of conflicts relevant to the project management domain at a meso level of analysis as focused on an organization’s project management context.
1.4 Purpose
In order to meet up with this research gap, the purpose of this study is to describe the categories of conflicts in a project management context through a literature review.