Assessment of Project Stakeholder Management practices: The case of Addis Ababa Water and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA)
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Date
2020-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study focuses on assessing the project stakeholder management practices of Addis Ababa Water
and Sewerage Authority (AAWSA). The research emphasizes on assessing how the project
stakeholders were being managed from the client side by assessing the practice of stakeholder
management in water and sanitation infrastructure development projects, and evaluating the
challenges encountered in managing project stakeholders. The study investigate the practices of
project stakeholder identification, project stakeholder management planning, and the practice of
engagement and communication with project stakeholders, and the associated challenges in project
stakeholders management. The descriptive study is used to determine the existing conditions and
practices in the case under study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through
questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The quantitative data from the survey questionnaire
were sorted and analyzed with the help of SPSS software, and the qualitative data was analyzed by
relating the results with literatures. The finding showed limitation in clearly identifying and
analyzing stakeholders’ interest and socio-cultural issues in sufficient detail at the project initiation
phase, and in systematically prioritizing stakeholders based on important factors. The other
drawback identified were inadequate stakeholders’ involvement in project stakeholder planning
process and absence of standardized communication system among stakeholders. The study result
revealed that the main challenges encountered in project stakeholder management were conflicting
requirements of stakeholders, late identification of stakeholders’ interest, procedural issues, and
communication gaps, respectively. Moreover, other challenges encountered involve inadequate
allocation of financial resources and technical tools, inadequate project management capacity
building trainings, reluctance due to compensation issues, right of way issues, difficulties in dealing
with change of interest with time by stakeholders, integration and commitment issues, and lack of
timely decisions. The study has also provided further recommendations for the improvement of
project stakeholder management practices on the basis of the finding of the study results.
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Keywords
stakeholder management,., identification, planning,, engagement and communication