The Role of Social Networks Theory and Methodology for Project Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is a key area in the management of projects. Correctly identifying key players, managing them and influencing them is crucial for the success of projects and programs. Often though, social networks and management literature has demonstrated that the process of work and ideas do not necessarily flow through organisational hierarchy, but rather through informal networks. In this paper, we discuss an overview of the stakeholder management approaches used and some of its limitations. We propose the use of social network theory and methodology is suggested as a viable perspective for stakeholder identification, analysis and management because of its theoretical and methodological rigour and its ability to provide insightful visualisations and useful network metrics to identify key influencers, bottlenecks, informal groups and so on.