Management of External Stakeholders in Public Infrastructure Projects : Two Case Studies from Spanish railway infrastructure projects

Abstract: Background: This thesis is encompassed within the project management science and more specifically within external stakeholder management in public infrastructure projects. Objectives: The objective of this thesis is to analyse project success within two public infrastructure projects in Spain and to gather insight on the impact on project success in public infrastructure projects when managing external stakeholders from a project management perspective in order to contribute to best project management practices knowledge. Methodology: Comparative case studies with a qualitative approach are used for this research, as this is suitable for examining phenomena within its real-life context. The methods of data collection used to gather insight about the research problem include semi-structured interviews, which are based on the perceptions of different stakeholder groups, and objective data based on facts and observations from publicly available documents. Results: Once the objective and subjective data is collected for each case study, this information is analysed and compared for each case as well as between case studies and literature review, this in order to obtain insight and provide answers to the original research questions about successful management of external stakeholders within public infrastructure projects. Conclusions: The main conclusions of this thesis are described in this chapter. The contribution of this thesis to public infrastructure project management is that it gathers insight on the impact on project success in public infrastructure projects when managing external stakeholders from a project management perspective. Finally, the main limitation of this thesis is the sample size in terms of case studies analysed and external stakeholders interviewed, which will require further research to evaluate if the conclusions obtained can vary depending on other external factors such as the type of public infrastructure projects, country and public promoter of the project. Recommendations for future research: Further research should determine whether other countries have similar experiences with regards to management of external stakeholders in public infrastructure projects. In addition, further research is advised regarding Spanish infrastructure projects to confirm the insights of this thesis. Besides, it is considered that further research in the definition of project success is advantageous. Another identified potential research area is the one related with external stakeholders analysis theories, as existing theories in current literature are more focuses on internal stakeholders.