Stakeholder Analysis as a Project Success Factor: An Application in the Defense Industry

Abstract

Purpose - Previous studies in the literature, it is accepted that the stakeholder approach should also be taken into account as a project success criteria. From this point of view, the purpose of this study is to examine how stakeholder management and stakeholder analysis are evaluated as a project success factor in defense industry projects in Turkey. Design/methodology/approach - This study employs a descriptive research model The data used in the analysis were collected from 389 participants engaged in project management activities in public and private sector enterprises operating in the Turkish defense sector and the data were analyzed quantitatively. Findings – The results of the analysis reveal that according to the participants the most important factor in a project’s success was quality and time, and followed by cost. Participants state that the effect of internal stakeholder satisfaction on project success is perceived to be less than other afore mentioned factors. In addition to these, it is shown that the participants do not have much awareness of stakeholder analysis and management, and the level of use of stakeholder management is not high enough. With the correlation analysis, it is aimed to determine which variable is more affected while increasing the score of a variable, and thus to determine whether there is a more relationship between which two variables than the other variables. According to the results of the correlation analysis, none of the variables showed significantly different results. In other words, if the weight of one criteria is increased, the others would be affected similarly, which is observed by having similar correlation coefficients. Discussion – The result of the analysis show that the stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management were not carried out with due consideration. In the light of the data, it was observed that the creation of a stakeholder management plan was ignored in the planning studies for the project. It was evaluated that the most important project success factor for the participants in the research was quality. Time and cost factors come next, and they state that internal stakeholder satisfaction is less important than other factors in project success.