Stakeholder Management And Project Performance Of Open Air Market Projects In Nyeri County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Project performance is evaluated differently by various stakeholders of the project based on their expectations in relation to the actual quality; cost and time. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of stakeholder management on project performance with the specific objectives being: to determine the influence of stakeholder need and expectation identification; communication; conflict management and stakeholder participation on project performance. The research adopted both descriptive and exploratory research design. The target population was all the Open air upgrading projects in Nyeri County. Sample selection was done through cluster sampling where the target population was divided according to the six (6) major Open air markets in each constituency in Nyeri County. The clusters were set to represent various project stakeholders namely: project managers, vendors, general public, project staffs and the local authorities. Data was collected using questionnaires. The content of the questions was the same to enhance analysis and a response rate of 83.5% was recorded. The researcher ran the data through the SPSS to obtain the descriptive statistics such as the mean, mode, frequencies and percentages. The findings of the study were presented using charts, graphs and tables. The results of the study established that the coefficients of “stakeholder’s need and expectation identification”, “communication”, “conflict management” and “stakeholder participation” were positive and significant and thus these factors determine project performance. Stakeholders’ participation positively enhances project performance of Open air Market project to a great extent followed by stakeholders’ needs and expectation identification, conflict management and finally communication. It was recommended that stakeholder participation is critical and hence the government must ensure the aspect of stakeholder involvement is adequately covered during the feasibility study of the intervention. To boost transparency and accountability of the project management the study recommends that the channels, format, frequency and responsibility of sharing of the progress report to the stakeholders be well defined during the conception stages of the intervention. The study further recommends that project management must change their reactive approach on occurrence of conflict but rather adopt a proactive approach in determining the highly susceptible issues and identify possible solution. To provide a clear picture of performance of Open air upgrading projects in the country the researcher recommends that more assessment of influence of stakeholder management on performance of Open Air upgrading projects in other counties in Kenya.