Tenure Track Seminar - Dario Cottafava

Dario Cottafava (University of Turin, Italy) will present his paper “Interpreting Stakeholder Ecosystems through Relational Stakeholder Theory: the case of a highly contested Megaproject” coauthored by Laura Corazza and Daniel Torchia (University of Turin), as well as Amandeep Dhir (University of Agder). Please find the abstract below.

The invited speaker is interested in a job tenure track in the department (Area: Organization)

Abstract

Managing stakeholders’ concerns in megaprojects with an ecosystem, inclusive, and ethical vision is a current open challenge. This paper presents an analysis of the stakeholder ecosystem of a contested megaproject in Italy (the Turin-Lyon high-speed rail) aimed at identifying similarities and discrepancies in the stakeholder prioritization between the managers’ perception and an ecosystem point of view. Following a pure mixed-method and by coding 21 interviews with middle and top managers of the organization in charge of the construction, the most relevant stakeholders have been identified by analysing both the self-declared statements of the managers and the emerging network of actors through a Social Network Analysis and the use of centrality degrees. Our findings reveal how the prioritization of stakeholders obtained through the centrality degrees significantly differs from what is self-declared by the managers, highlighting how a stakeholder mapping process has to be designed and reiterated during the whole life of a megaproject.