case study stakeholder management

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four.  Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls,  Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

• Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
• Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
• The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
• Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
• A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
• Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1.   Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2.   Coffee 2016

3.   Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4.   Glory, Glory Man United!

5.   Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6.   The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7.   Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8.   Prodigy Finance

9.   Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, stakeholder management in open innovation projects: a multiple case study analysis.

European Journal of Innovation Management

ISSN : 1460-1060

Article publication date: 16 September 2020

Issue publication date: 12 October 2021

In recent years, companies have started to open up their Research and Development (R&D) and their innovation activities to external partners. They aim to access new resources and capabilities and to gain shorter time-to-markets. However, as several studies have shown, it can be difficult to manage collaborative (open) innovation projects to achieve desired outcomes. Starting from this premise, the paper investigates how project stakeholder management is different in open innovation projects from traditional R&D projects.

Design/methodology/approach

The study has a qualitative nature and is based on the interpretative paradigm with an inductive orientation. The paper leverages interviews with experts involved in open innovation projects conducted in two Science and Technology Parks between Sweden and Italy.

The analysis shows how companies manage multiple stakeholders in open innovation projects and the peculiarities project stakeholder management faces in these projects when compared with traditional R&D projects. The paper shows how the relationships with external partners in open innovation projects are regulated by informal identification and analysis frameworks, which reduce the tensions deriving from these multiple collaborations. In addition, it underlines a set of good practices, and project management aspects for developing effective absorptive capacity of know-how, resources, and capabilities from external stakeholders in open innovation projects.

Originality/value

The paper analyzes for the first time how companies manage multiple stakeholders in open innovation projects in a different way from traditional R&D projects. Furthermore, the paper introduces a shift in the focus of the analysis: it focuses on the level of the project conducted through multiple collaborations instead of on the level of the firms involved in the project. Finally, the paper integrates open innovation research with project management research.

• Stakeholder management
• Project management
• Open innovation
• Open innovation projects

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank Anna Ystrom for her support in data collecting and in the first phase of research

Urbinati, A. , Landoni, P. , Cococcioni, F. and De Giudici, L. (2021), "Stakeholder management in open innovation projects: a multiple case study analysis", European Journal of Innovation Management , Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 1595-1624. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJIM-03-2020-0076

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles

We’re listening — tell us what you think, something didn’t work….

Report bugs here

All feedback is valuable

Please share your general feedback

Join us on our journey

Platform update page.

Visit emeraldpublishing.com/platformupdate to discover the latest news and updates

Questions & More Information

Answers to the most commonly asked questions here

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

How to Create a Stakeholder Strategy

• Darrell Rigby,
• Zach First,
• Dunigan O’Keeffe

Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder has an impact on other stakeholders—engaged employees improve customer satisfaction, which in turn spurs growth, and so on—many CEOs are pledging to generate benefits for all their constituents: customers, workers, suppliers, communities, and investors. But few leaders have explicit strategies for doing so; most seem to rely on intuitive approaches.

The good news is, firms can use data to design and implement effective stakeholder strategies. They should start by exploring outside perspectives of the value they produce—specifically, the ratings of agencies like the Drucker Institute and Just Capital. Firms must then bolster data from such third parties with inside insights and gain an understanding of the interdependencies among their particular stakeholders. Armed with that, they can develop a clear description of their purpose, establish criteria for evaluating progress toward it, set priorities among stakeholders, and start measuring value creation for each group. The last step is sustaining the new strategy through cultural change and by developing supporting processes and organizational structures.

A data-driven approach to design, measurement, and implementation

Idea in Brief

The problem.

There has been growing recognition that the shareholder value movement went too far and that to create sustainable, responsible businesses, companies should provide benefits to all stakeholders. But the big challenge has been developing a strategy for doing so and a mechanism for implementing it.

A Critical Advance

Dozens of firms have helped substantially improve the quantity and quality of publicly available data about companies’ impact on their stakeholders. The data proves that the companies that create the greatest total value across all dimensions of performance don’t do so at the expense of shareholder value.

The Solution

Data can also greatly improve the strategy development process. First you need to make sense of outside perspectives of the value your company is generating. Then bolster data from those outsiders with insider insights, analyze the interdependencies among your stakeholders, and create your own strategy. Finally, build systems to implement and sustain it.

Most people will readily agree that the first responsibility of business leaders is to grow the long-term value of their companies. But that’s where the agreement ends and the debate begins: What is value, and how should it be measured and managed? Is a company’s value maximized by being shareholder-centric, customer-centric, employee-centric, or some-other-stakeholder-centric? In a complex system where every stakeholder influences other stakeholders’ outcomes—highly engaged employees improve customer satisfaction, which in turn helps accelerate profitable growth, and so on—are any stakeholders safe to neglect?

• Darrell Rigby is a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company. He heads the firm’s global agile enterprise practice. He is the author of Winning in Turbulence and a coauthor of Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020).
• Zach First is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Bain & Company. He leads the firm’s stakeholder strategy work. From 2016 to 2022 he was the executive director of the Drucker Institute. DrZfirst
• Dunigan O’Keeffe leads the global strategy practice for Bain & Company and is a Bain partner based in San Francisco.

Partner Center

How to perform a stakeholder analysis

Reading time: about 7 min

You’ve crunched the numbers. You’ve built out your case for a new project or technology investment. You’ve got all the resources to make it happen.

But you’re still missing a step—and arguably the most important one: stakeholder approval and buy-in.

Stakeholders are built into every organization to help ensure that messaging is accurate, work stays on track, or new initiatives are aligned toward shared business goals. While their intentions are good, stakeholders can often be viewed as a roadblock to progress.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the stakeholder analysis process and make sure your goals will actually garner support. Here, we’ll dive into how to perform a stakeholder analysis to identify and get buy-in from key stakeholders at your organization.

Who is a stakeholder—and why do they matter?

Projects are a collaborative effort that impact and intersect with multiple people, teams, organizations, and clients. Anyone who is affected by the outcome of your project, or is actively involved in the project, is referred to as a stakeholder.

This includes any people or groups that influence and are impacted by your project’s outcome, such as

• Project manager
• Team members
• Senior management

Stakeholders can include a wide range of people with varied—and often conflicting—interests that you will need to manage. Keeping stakeholders happy, informed, and on-board is essential to moving your project forward. That’s why understanding who your stakeholders are and what their level of investment and influence is on the project is critical to your success.

What is a stakeholder analysis?

Stakeholder buy-in and approval is just as much about communication, education, and visibility as it is about strategic alignment. Stakeholders must be able to quickly and easily understand where a new project or investment fits into the larger business picture.

A stakeholder analysis template, also known as a power interest grid, can help you in four key ways:

• Gathering crucial input: You don’t know what you don’t know. Often, key stakeholders deliver valuable insight that can help keep your project on track and successful.
• Gaining more resources: If your stakeholder has a full understanding of what it will take to get your project off the ground, they may be able to help you secure the people, tools, and resources you need to make you successful.
• Building trust: By consistently engaging and involving stakeholders in your process, you’re building trust that may make them quick to support upcoming projects.
• Planning ahead: Consistent feedback from key stakeholders helps you anticipate feedback and requirements on future projects to gain buy-in more quickly.  

Performing a stakeholder analysis involves these three steps.

Step 1: Identify your stakeholders

Brainstorm who your stakeholders are. List all of the people who are affected by your work or who have a vested interest in its success or failure. Some of these relationships may include investors, advisors, teammates, or even family.

There are two main groups of stakeholders: internal stakeholders and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders are individuals or groups within your business, such as team members or leadership.

External stakeholders are individuals or groups outside the business, including end users, customers, and investors.

You will need to identify and assess both types of stakeholders in your analysis.

Step 2: Prioritize your stakeholders

Next, prioritize your stakeholders by assessing their level of influence and level of interest. The stakeholder grid is the leading tool in visually assessing key stakeholders.

The position that you allocate to a stakeholder on the grid shows you the actions to take with them:

• High power, highly interested people: Fully engage these people, and make the greatest efforts to satisfy them.
• High power, less interested people: Keep these stakeholders satisfied, but not so much that they become bored with your message.
• Low power, highly interested people: Adequately inform these people, and talk to them to ensure that no major issues arise. People in this category can often be very helpful with the details of your project in a supportive role.
• Low power, less interested people: Again, monitor these people, but don’t bore them with excessive communication.

Step 3: Understand your key stakeholders

Now that stakeholders have been identified and prioritized, you need to understand how they feel about your project. Some good questions to ask include:

• Do they have a financial or emotional interest in the outcome of your work? Is it positive or negative?
• What motivates them the most?
• Which of your project information is relevant to them, and what is the best way to relay that information?
• What is their current opinion of your work? Is that opinion based on accurate information?
• Who influences their opinion, and are those influencers also your stakeholders?
• If they’re not likely to be supportive of your project, what can you do to win their support?
• If you can’t win their support, what can you do to manage their opposition?

Once you've prioritized your stakeholders and consider their attitude toward your project, you should also consider creating a project management communication plan . A communication matrix will let everyone involved know how often they need to loop stakeholders in.

The most common stakeholders

Below is a list of common stakeholders and some examples of associated communication strategies.

Your direct manager/supervisor

High power, high interest

Your boss’s reputation is tied to the productivity of the people they lead. Your boss also likely has the power to advance or shut down your project(s). This means that you should manage this relationship closely, communicating frequently and requesting and implementing feedback.

Shareholders/investors

High power, medium interest

Shareholders and investors usually hold stake in multiple entities, diluting their unique interest in your project/undertaking. As such, to leverage their investment in your work, you should communicate frequently with them, consult and involve them, with a goal of increasing their interest over time. This is obviously dependent on the type of investment role that exists, and whether your project is the sole investment or part of a portfolio of investments.

High power, probably low interest

The government controls the laws and regulations that could shut down your business or project. Health code inspectors and IRS auditors are examples of government officials that classify as stakeholders. Because government entities monitor everything/everyone, their interest in your individual business/endeavor is likely low. As such, your goal should be to keep them satisfied, communicating regularly, consulting and involving them in order to prevent them from posing a risk to your project.

Senior executives

High power, low interest

Your company’s senior executives make the biggest decision, giving them high influence but limited bandwidth to focus on your project specifically. This means your strategy should be to keep them satisfied. Communicate when necessary, consulting and seeking feedback, to increase their interest in you and your work.

Your co-workers

Medium power, medium interest

Co-workers carry a range of influence, but mostly their influence will be in their ability to leverage additional resources for your project, including the support of other co-workers and your superiors. That means you want to keep them satisfied and informed. Update them on your project, and be willing to leverage their interest into a supporter role.

The tools you need to keep stakeholders informed

No matter the level of technical knowledge around your project, visuals like a stakeholder diagram are a great way to communicate your project to your key stakeholders and obtain buy-in. Further, it’s useful to know not only what to communicate, but how often to communicate.

Lucidchart offers numerous templates to help you keep stakeholders updated on new and in-progress projects.

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Related articles

Before you start any project, learn how to identify and gain the support of the right people through a stakeholder map and analysis.

Learn how to create a communication plan for project management and how this documentation can benefit your team and stakeholders. This article includes best practices and communication plan templates!

Bring your bright ideas to life.

or continue with

• Contact sales

Start free trial

Stakeholder Analysis 101 (Example & Template Included)

A stakeholder is anyone who has a vested interest in a project. If your stakeholders aren’t satisfied with the results of a project, you’ve failed. Therefore, in order to successfully complete a project, it’s essential to gain a clear understanding of who your stakeholders are, what their expectations are and what motivates them. This process is called stakeholder analysis.

What Is Stakeholder Analysis?

Stakeholder analysis identifies and prioritizes stakeholders before the project begins. It organizes stakeholders into groups according to how much they participate in the project, what their interest level is and how much influence they have. Once these people are identified and organized, then you must figure out the best way to involve each stakeholder in the project, including the best channels for communication based on their needs.

Get your free

Stakeholder Analysis Template

Use this free Stakeholder Analysis Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Communication is key to stakeholder analysis because stakeholders must buy into and approve the project, and this can only be done with timely information and visibility into the project. The former puts the project in context while the latter builds trust. All this leads to the project being in strategic alignment with stakeholders and the overall business goals of the company.

Why Is Stakeholder Analysis Important?

Stakeholder analysis is a way to get help from key project players. Once you determine who these key stakeholders are, then you can bring them into the project kickoff meeting to help align the project with strategic objectives. Their experience helps a project avoid pitfalls and getting their help builds stronger relationships. They can also help with conflict resolution during the project execution.

Stakeholders are also crucial for delivering the resources you need to get the project done right. When there is good communication between a stakeholder and a project manager, then the stakeholder can help deliver the people, tools and other resources necessary to get the project done.

The process of going through stakeholder analysis is also a way to build a relationship of trust with stakeholders. Once you have a line of communication open with stakeholders, develop a good rapport and show transparency in the project, you encourage trust. These elements should be considered in your stakeholder management plan .

Project management software helps keep the lines of communication open between project managers and stakeholders. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that has customizable reports that are easy to share with stakeholders to keep them updated. After you do the stakeholder analysis, use filtered status reports or portfolio reports to manage stakeholder expectations. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Stakeholder Analysis Steps

Stakeholder analysis uses a technique called stakeholder mapping. Before starting, you first must decide on the focus of the project. This will determine who is most important in terms of stakeholders. Once that is determined, then you can download our free stakeholder map template and follow these steps.

1. List the Stakeholders

As noted above, stakeholders come in all shapes and sizes. While it’s important to narrow the focus that comes in later. At this point, you want to list everyone who is a stakeholder , no matter the level of their significance to the project. As you list your stakeholders, keep in mind that they fall into two main categories: those who are affected by the project and those who contribute to it.

For example, the project manager and the team are contributors to the project, while the end-user is someone who is affected by it. It’s possible that stakeholders fall into both categories. The better this list is, the less likely you’ll be delayed or sidetracked during the project.

2. Analyze Stakeholders

What are the roles and expectations of all those stakeholders that you have listed above? Some stakeholders are going to have more importance to the project and their expectations will have more of an impact than others. This is where you make those determinations.

You can discern this by using an influence-interest matrix, which is a box broken into four sections. You should place your stakeholders in one of the four boxes based on their interest and influence levels.

The top of the box is broken into two sections: keep informed and manage closely. The lower half of the box is also broken into two sections: minimal contact and keep satisfied. Anyone placed to the right of the box has more influence, while anyone placed near the top of the box has more interest. If a stakeholder is placed in the top right, then they have a lot of interest and influence, making them important players in the project.

3. Prioritize Stakeholders

Once you have a thorough list, you can begin prioritizing them by importance to the project. Decide who among them has the most influence on the project plan and is affected by it. You can use the influence-interest matrix again to help with prioritizing stakeholders.

Don’t forget that the status of your stakeholders is not static, they can change throughout the course of the project. Stakeholder analysis is not a one-time thing but is a process that should continue throughout the project.

4. Engage Stakeholders

Finally, with the information created in your stakeholder map, you figure out how to engage your stakeholders. This is the process by which you win over stakeholders, and get their understanding and support to help fuel the project, putting it on the right course. This leads to a communication plan that outlines the channel and frequency of communications between you and each stakeholder. You can use our communication plan template to get started.

ProjectManager has dozens of free project management templates for Excel and Word that can help manage projects throughout their life cycle. Use our free stakeholder analysis template for Excel to capture all the pertinent information you need to manage stakeholders’ expectations.

Stakeholder Analysis Example

To better understand what stakeholder analysis is look at a stakeholder analysis example. We’ll keep it simple, say hiring a contractor to build a playhouse for your child.

First, you want to list all the stakeholders, which includes the owner, you, and your child, but also the contractor you’ve hired for the project. Now, analyze those stakeholders. You have a high influence on the project and make the decisions, while your child has a medium influence as you want to build something the child will like. The contractor isn’t a decision-maker but has a high influence on the execution of the project.

Prioritize these stakeholders, such as you as owner will have the highest priority, the contractor next and the child last. In terms of engagement, you and the contractor will likely want to have daily discussions on the progress of the project. The child is probably only interested in the final delivery.

Stakeholder Analysis Tools

To excel at stakeholder analysis, you’ll need the proper tools. They will help you identify, prioritize and communicate with your stakeholders. Here are some that we recommend.

Stakeholder Map or Power/Interest Grid

A stakeholder map is a matrix that helps to categorize stakeholders. It helps with the analysis and management of stakeholders by mapping them to a grip that shows their power and interest in the project.

Stakeholder Knowledge Base Chart

This stakeholder analysis tool maps stakeholders based on their knowledge of the project and their attitude toward the project. It’s a box divided into four quadrants: aware/opposition, aware/support, ignorant, opposition and ignorant/support.

Stakeholder Salience Model

This model is used to define how much priority and attention a project manager should give to competing stakeholder claims. It does this by measuring each stakeholder’s power, legitimacy and urgency.

Stakeholder Onion Diagram

This analytical tool is used to figure out who are the stakeholders in the project and how each of the stakeholders’ roles interacts with the project . Like an onion, there’s a process or product at the center that’s surrounded by layers of stakeholders.

RACI Matrix

RACI is an acronym that stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. This matrix then will define each stakeholder as one of those four letters in terms of activities or decision-making.

How ProjectManager Helps With Stakeholder Management

Once you’ve identified and analyzed your stakeholders, you’re going to have to work with them. That’s where ProjectManager comes in. Our award-winning project management software has all the tools you need to manage your projects and keep your stakeholders engaged.

Naturally, stakeholders have an interest in the project. But, that doesn’t mean you have to give them every detail. Sometimes it’s the big picture that counts. ProjectManager has a real-time dashboard that paints the project in broad strokes, such as task progress, costs and project variance. These colorful graphs and charts make it easy to see where the project is right now.

Unlimited File Storage

Projects make paperwork. Stakeholders like those business cases and want to have access to them. ProjectManager has unlimited file storage, so add as many project-related documents and images as you like. Everything is in one place and easy to find. Keep stakeholders happy.

ProjectManager is online project management software that helps project managers manage their projects, teams and stakeholders. With planning, tracking and reporting tools, managers and teams are prepared for every project phase.  See how ProjectManager can support you and your stakeholders with this free 30-day trial.

Deliver your projects on time and under budget

Start planning your projects.

Stakeholder Analysis, Project Management templates and advice

• A complete IT software project Stakeholder Analysis
• Complete Construction Project Stakeholder Map
• Example Stakeholder Management Plan
• Stakeholder Engagement Plan
• Stakeholder Analysis & Stakeholder Salience Templates
• Communication & Reporting Plan
• Sample text to copy and paste for your assignment or project

Stakeholder analysis example

Software project stakeholder case study.

• Chief Information Officer(CIO)
• Change Manager
• Project Manager
• Outsourced call-center managers
• Networking & security
• Web standards
• Training Manager
• Legacy systems owners
• Outsourced call-center staff

Example Stakeholder Analysis for a Software Project

Influence lines between stakeholders

If we now consider how the stakeholders can influence each other we find useful intelligence that can help drive the stakeholder engagement strategy. We can do this by adding lines that indicate how certain stakeholders influence other stakeholders. The influence lines for the CRM project are shown below. You will probably notice that they are specific to the organization and personalities involved. Influence lines can clearly never be drawn between roles or ‘reused’ for other projects - there are so many different factors involved.

Stakeholder Analysis with Influence lines

Download this Example Stakeholder Analysis

Zip file download with powerpoint version .ppt .pptx, zip file download with pdf version, stakeholder analysis resources.

• Stakeholder analysis templates in Word, Visio and Excel.
• Basic Stakeholder Analysis Method
• BPM Stakeholder Analysis
• Career Stakeholder Analysis
• Stakeholder Analysis - keeping stakeholders happy
• Stakeholder Analysis Keyplayers
• Stakeholder Analysis Questions
• Stakeholder Salience
• Stakeholder Analysis Software
• Stakeholder Analysis Video

Bibliography for stakeholder analysis example

Share this image.

Stakeholder Management in University-Industry Collaboration Programs: A Case Study

• Conference paper
• First Online: 24 June 2021
• Cite this conference paper

• Gabriela Fernandes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2715-9826 13 ,
• Marlene Capitão   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7985-4679 14 ,
• Anabela Tereso   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9802-0074 14 ,
• José Oliveira 15 &
• Eduardo B. Pinto   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4981-6153 16  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering ((LNME))

Included in the following conference series:

• International Conference Innovation in Engineering

1273 Accesses

1 Citations

Poor stakeholder management repeatedly comes up as one of the main reasons for unsuccessful projects. This issue takes a higher dimension when we look at the inter-organizational context, where traditional stakeholder management practices may be insufficient. This paper investigates stakeholder management applied to the context of collaborative research and development (R&D) programs between university and industry, a particular form of inter-organizational relationships. A large case study involving an R&D collaboration between a university and an industry in Portugal, collaborating with each other for more than seven years, with 170 million euros of investment, is analyzed based on participant observation and document analysis. A methodology for stakeholder management in collaborative programs between university and industry is proposed, which includes several systematic practices. For example, in the process of identify stakeholders, it is suggested to identify the expectations, required contributions and previous experience of stakeholders, and in the process of monitor stakeholder engagement comes, to define KPIs for measuring their engagement evolution. This is a methodology that considers the subjective aspects of human action and, therefore, applies tools and techniques that fully involve the stakeholder, such as surveys to monitor their self-engagement. The methodology can be used as a starting point for the systematic development of stakeholder management processes in any large collaborative project and program.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Fernandes, G., Pinto, E.B., Araújo, M., Machado, R.J.: The roles of a programme and project management office to support collaborative university–industry R&D. Total Qual. Manag. Bus. Excell. 31 , 583–608 (2020)

Article   Google Scholar  

Barnes, T.A., Pashby, I.R., Gibbons, A.M.: Managing collaborative R&D projects development of a practical management tool. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 24 , 395–404 (2006)

Fernandes, G., O’Sullivan, D., Pinto, E.B., Araújo, M., Machado, R.J.: Value of project management in university–industry R&D collaborations. Int. J. Manag. Proj. Bus. 13 , 819–843 (2020)

International Standish Group: The Chaos Manifesto (2013)

Google Scholar  

PMI: A Guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide). Project Management Institute, Newtown Square (2017)

Barnes, T.A., Pashby, I.R., Gibbons, A.M.: Effective university - Industry interaction: a multi-case evaluation of collaborative R&D projects. Eur. Manag. J. 20 (3), 272–285 (2002)

Urbinati, A., Landoni, P., Cococcioni, F., De Giudici, L.: Stakeholder management in open innovation projects: a multiple case study analysis. Eur. J. Innov. Manag. Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print (2020). https://doi.org/10.1108/EJIM-03-2020-0076

Rowlinson, S., Cheung, Y.K.F.: Stakeholder management through empowerment: modelling project success. Constr. Manag. Econ. 26 (6), 611–623 (2008)

Scandura, A.: University – industry collaboration and firms’ R&D effort. Res. Policy 45 , 1907 (2016)

Poyago-Theotoky, J., Beath, J.S., Siegel, D.: Universities and fundamental research: reflections on the growth of university-industry partnership. Oxford Rev. Econ. Policy 18 , 10–21 (2002)

Fernandes, G., O’Sullivan, D.: Benefits management in university-industry collaboration programs. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 39 , 71–84 (2021)

Rybnicek, R., Königsgruber, R.: What makes industry–university collaboration succeed? A systematic review of the literature. J. Bus. Econ. 89 (2), 221–250 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-018-0916-6

European Commission: Study on Network Analysis of the 7 th Framework Programme Participation Final Report (2015)

vom Brocke, J., Lippe, S.: Managing collaborative research projects: a synthesis of project management literature and directives for future research. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 33 , 1022–1039 (2015)

König, B., Diehl, K., Tscherning, K., Helming, K.: A framework for structuring interdisciplinary research management. Res. Policy 42 , 261 (2013)

Chin, C.M.M., Yap, E.H., Spowage, A.C.: Project Management Methodology for University-Industry Collaborative Projects (2011)

Fernandes, G., Machado, R.J., Pinto, E.B., Araujo, M., Pontes, A.: A quantitative study to assess a program and project management approach for collaborative university-industry R&D funded contracts. In: Proceedings of 22th ICE/IEEE Conference, pp. 1–9. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., Trondheim Norway (2016)

Tereso, A., Ribeiro, P., Fernandes, G., Loureiro, I., Ferreira, M.: Project management prac-tices in private organizations. Proj. Manag. J. 50 , 6–22 (2019)

Fernandes, G., Pinto, E.B., Machado, R.J., Araújo, M., Pontes, A.: A program and project management approach for collaborative university-industry R&D funded contracts. In: Procedia Computer Science, pp. 1065–1074. Elsevier B.V. (2015)

Freeman, R.E.: Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Pitman, Boston (1984)

Eskerod, P.: Stakeholders. In: Cambridge Handbook of Organizational Project Management, pp. 172–185. Cambridge University Press (2017)

Jepsen, A.L., Eskerod, P.: Stakeholder analysis in projects: challenges in using current guidelines in the real world. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 27 , 375 (2009)

Mitchell, R.K., Agle, B.R., Wood, D.J.: Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and what really counts. Acad. Manag. Rev. 22 , 853–886 (1997)

Bourne, L.: Project Relationship Management and the Stakeholder Circle (2005)

Eskerod, P., Larsen, T.: Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the context.’ Int. J. Proj. Manag. 36 , 161–169 (2018)

Pouloudi, A., Whitley, E.A.: Stakeholder identification in inter-organizational systems: gaining insights for drug use management systems. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 6 , 1–14 (1997)

Bourne, L.: Targeted communication: the key to effective stakeholder engagement. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 226 , 431–438 (2016)

Hermann, S.: Corporate Sustainability Branding. Deutscher, Wiesbaden (2005)

Book   Google Scholar  

Elias, A.A., Cavana, R.Y., Jackson, L.S.: Stakeholder analysis for R&D project manage-ment. R D Manag. 32 , 301–310 (2002)

Fernandes, G., Amaral, A., Peixoto, J., Pinto, E.B., Araújo, M., Machado, R.J.: Key initiatives to successfully manage collaborative university-industry R&D: IC-HMI case study. In: Procedia Computer Science, pp. 414–423. Elsevier B.V. (2019)

Yin, R.K.: Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods). SAGE Publications Inc., London (2013)

Saunders, M.N.K., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A.: Research Methods for Business Students. Pearson, Canada (2019)

Baker, L.M.: Observation: a complex research method. Libr. Trends. 55 , 171 (2006)

Universidade do Minho - Escola de Engenharia: Sensible Car. https://www.eng.uminho.pt/pt/investigareinovar/projetoscomempresas/Paginas/projetosensiblecar.aspx . Accessed 15 Mar 2021

Fernandes, A.G.G., et al.: I&DT em Colaboração Universidade-Indústria: Modelo de Gov-ernação, Portugal (2019)

Freeman, R.E., Harrison, J.S., Wicks, A.C.: Managing for stakeholders: Survival, reputation, and success (2007)

Yang, J., Shen, P.Q., Bourne, L., Ho, C.M.F., Xue, X.: A typology of operational approaches for stakeholder analysis and engagement. Constr. Manag. Econ. 29 , 145–162 (2011)

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by European Structural and Investment Funds, through the COMPETE 2020 [Project nº 39479; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-39479] and by national funds through FCT – Project UIDB/00285/2020.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Univ Coimbra, CEMMPRE, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rua Luís Reis Santos, Coimbra, Portugal

Gabriela Fernandes

ALGORITMI, Engineering School, University of Minho, Campus de Azurém, Guimarães, Portugal

Marlene Capitão & Anabela Tereso

BOSCH Car Multimedia, S.A, Rua Max Grunding 35, Braga, Portugal

José Oliveira

CCG/ZGDV Institute, Campus de Azurém, Guimarães, Portugal

Eduardo B. Pinto

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gabriela Fernandes .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

José Machado

Department of Industrial Electronics, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal

Filomena Soares

Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland

Justyna Trojanowska

Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Machines and Tools, Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine

Vitalii Ivanov

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Fernandes, G., Capitão, M., Tereso, A., Oliveira, J., Pinto, E.B. (2022). Stakeholder Management in University-Industry Collaboration Programs: A Case Study. In: Machado, J., Soares, F., Trojanowska, J., Ivanov, V. (eds) Innovations in Industrial Engineering. icieng 2021. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78170-5_13

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78170-5_13

Published : 24 June 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-78169-9

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-78170-5

eBook Packages : Engineering Engineering (R0)

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research