Emerging issues related to stakeholder management in PPP projects: An Australia study

Many countries around the world are in search of new means to engage the private sector in managing and financing infrastructure through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). When considering Australian context Stakeholder Management (SM) related issues have been reported as one of the main reasons for failure in several instances. PPPs involve many stakeholders whose interests might not be in agreement leading to conflicting objectives. Therefore, this research aims to determine the current emerging issues related to SM in Australian PPPs. This study has investigated the emerging issues related SM through an extensive literature review. The identified issues were further validated using 19 semi structured interviews to establish a full list of SM related issues. Then the critical SM related issues were investigated through a questionnaire survey. The findings revealed twelve critical issues related to SM. The most critical issues were: responsibilities overlap between different Government agencies; political interests push PPP project decisions and incomprehensible project brief and reference design. Further the comparative study highlighted that most of these issues have become critical for the private sector side of the partnership. As such this study highlighted the necessity of a strong Government sector with a robust SM practice to PPP project success.