Research On The Governance Relationship Among Project Stakeholders

The corresponding theories on Project Management have got abundant achievements, which act as a beneficial guidance to the project management practice, however, there is still a high rate about the unsuccessful project. Researchers have started to realize that project management, which puts project team as the main concern, is not sufficient to solve all the problems in project. They start to focus on external stakeholders outside project team. As the increase of cooperation among different organizations in one project, it is more popular that many organizations participate in a project and more and more project tasks need multi-stakeholers' collaboration. Therefore, it becomes more and more important to build stable and reliable relationships among project stakeholders. To establish and maintain these relationships, we must change the research perspective from project management to project governance.This dissertation focuses on the essence, establishment and maintance of the relationships among project stakeholders. It mainly contains these following three parts:The first part, which contains the first and second chapter, reviews the related research on project stakeholders management and then points out that'Relationships' should be one key content in this field. In fact, this relationship is one governance relationship; accordingly studies should be based on project governance. Concerning to the current studies and future direction on project governance, this dissertation takes 'roles and processes' as the basis for the following study. This perspective can be adapted to study projects which have uniqueness and provisionality. This part also summarizes the theories used in the following studies.The second part, which contains the third, fourth and fifth chapter, studies the process to build and maintain the relationships among stakeholders. This part mainly includes three aspects as follows:(1) How to define differenct roles taken by different stakeholders, is considered as the base for the study on the relationships. Based on the analysis upon essence of project governance roles and method from Product Design, this part points out the process which includes requirements definition, project product design, project solutions design, governance roles definition and other steps, and then formulates the method to divide different governance roles, realize the quantified link between stakeholders' requirements and stakeholders' roles; (2) Based on the governance roles taken by stakeholders, this part takes the process stakeholders taking part in one project as one process in which stakeholders invest in project and expect the project profit. Relationships among different stakeholders are simplified as the game relationships. In order to maximum the profit of every stakeholder, they should collaborate in the project. Based on the Collaberative Games Model for the stakehoders, we can get the solutions on how to allocate the project profit. In fact, normally the expected project profit is not certain, so this part borrows the principles and methods from Fuzzy Mathematics to modified the model and solutions above; (3) In order to get the maximum, fair and reasonable profit, it is necessary to build the coolaberative relationships among project stakeholders. However, this kind of relationships depends on a cooperation agreement before the project implemention. This part aims to set the meathods to safeguard the generation on project stakeholder relations, and then to reach the cooperation agreement among stakeholders.The third part is the sixth chapter. This part takes one project case as the example to show how to build and maintain the relationships among stakeholers. Analysis results show that the clear definition to project governance roles and relationships can improve project performance and stakeholders' satisfaction effectively, thus project success can be achieved more easily.From the perspective of governance, this dissertation studies how to build and maintain the governance relationships among stakehoders by virtue of the theories and methods from Governance, Roles, Quality Function Deployment, Collaberative Games, and Fuzzy Mathematics. The conclutions are as follows:1. By virtue of the principle and method about the Maximal Flow in Graph Theory, this dissertation improves the Qulity Function Deloyment in Product Design field. Project governance roles by different stakeholders can be mapped with the project requirements.Every stakeholder in one project should take part in different projects at the same time, so how to allocate its own limited resource to different project should be regarded as one important task. One principle should be persevered, that is'the more profit, the more project tasks'. This paper improves the Qulity Function Deloyment in Product Design field. Project governance roles by different stakeholders can be mapped with the project requirements.2. Governance relationships among project stakeholders can be simplified by virtue of Game Theory. Concerning to the uncertain project profit, the principles and methods from Fuzzy Mathematics can be used to modify and improve the Collaborative Game model and profit solutions. All of these tasks can ensure to realize the reasonable project profit allocation measures.In order to get the fair and reasonable profit, the coolaberative relationships among project stakeholders should be regarded. This part aims to set the meathods to safeguard the generation on project stakeholder relations, and then to reach the cooperation agreement among stakeholders. The meathods above can be sort to three kinds from the perspective of the basis, build and maintaince to the relationships.3. Through the case analysis, the process to realize the governance relationships amongy project stakeholders can be achieved in the project practice.This dissertation takes the'relationships among project stakeholders'as the research object, break through the previous research on project stakeholders management from the process and structure perspective, puts forward the method to allocate the fuzzy project profit and related safeguard solutions. The main innovations are as follows:1. Innovation on the study perspectiveAlthough the current research on project stakeholder management increases gradually, these studies take one single project stakeholder into consideration. This dissertation takes'Relationships among different project stakeholders'as the research object, especially by the project governance from the perspective of'roles and process'. It realizes the possilbity to use one unified process to build different relationships amond different project stakeholders in different projects. It also enriches and improves the project governance theory from the roles and process perspective. 2. Innovation on the study methodThis study is concerned to sociology, economics, management, operations research and other fields. Through literature study, deduce and case analysis, it modifies and improves the methods and tools in the field of Product Design, Quality Management, Collaboritive Game, etc. There are certain innovations on the study method. (1) To point out the Affinity Diagram to identify the expectations from different project stakeholders. The identified expectations are the base for defining the project objective. (2) To modify the Dynamic Quality Function Deployment based on the Max-flow Principle. It quantified the relationship between the requirements and governance roles for each project stakeholders. (3) To design the fuzzy project profit allocation solutions for the project stakeholders. It is more suitable for the uncertain project profit in practice.3. Innovation on the practical applicationThis dissertation puts the theorical result into the project practice and breaks through the previous project management scope which is guided by Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). There are certain innovations on the practical application.There is only a short history for the study and application on Project Governance. Although this paper studies the general theory and application on project stakeholder governance, this subject is very extensive and complex. We hope we can continue the study on the field of project governance in the future.