Purpose – The Netherlands is one of the frontrunners in green concrete with innovative pilot projects and institutional settings (e.g. concrete agreement). However, mainstreaming green concrete needs to further overcome economic, institutional, technical and social barriers. Especially, demand-side organizations can play a critical role by setting environmental standards and project prioritization. In this regard, this study aims to understand how demand-side organizations can stimulate green concrete adoption in the construction sector by using the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework. Design/methodology/approach – The MLP framework was chosen to understand the dynamics between socio-technical elements that shape the transition. This research uses a qualitative research approach by interviewing 12 key experts in the Dutch concrete industry based on their expertise and experience. Interviewees were identified based on the snowballing technique. Subsequent thematic analysis reveals strategies for accelerating green concrete adoption. Findings – Key findings emphasize the need to promote diverse cement types tailored to specific applications, accelerate the development of alternative supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), create aggregate demand for near-mature innovations and provide large-scale testing for radical innovations. Practical implications – This research provides construction stakeholders with a framework for identifying leverage points where policy alignment and market demand can jointly drive innovation diffusion. Social implications – This study highlights the necessity of integrating incremental and radical innovations to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. Originality/value – This study contributes to the construction management field by translating transition theory into operational insights for project-based organizations and demand-side actors.

External stakeholders including communities, user groups, interest organisations, and non-contractual actors are pivotal to project legitimacy and outcomes across sectors. The chapter first outlines why managing external stakeholders is both a strategic necessity and a complex challenge shaped by plural interests, institutional contexts, and evolving societal expectations. Following this, it takes stock of existing work by synthesizing current research, identifying progress in governance frameworks, participatory practices, and methodological innovation, alongside gaps in theory integration, cross-context analysis, stakeholder identification, and outcome measurement. The collection of chapters in this book progress logically from foundations and identification, through policy and practice, to special contexts with positive exemplars. The chapter proposes a research and practice agenda centred on multi-theoretical perspectives, adaptive governance, sustainability, and robust evaluation. It is argued that effective external stakeholder management should be embedded as a proactive, value-creating capability in project strategy, ensuring not just project delivery but enduring social legitimacy. External stakeholders including communities, user groups, interest organisations, and non-contractual actors are pivotal to project legitimacy and outcomes across sectors. The chapter first outlines why managing external stakeholders is both a strategic necessity and a complex challenge shaped by plural interests, institutional contexts, and evolving societal expectations. Following this, it takes stock of existing work by synthesizing current research, identifying progress in governance frameworks, participatory practices, and methodological innovation, alongside gaps in theory integration, cross-context analysis, stakeholder identification, and outcome measurement. The collection of chapters in this book progress logically from foundations and identification, through policy and practice, to special contexts with positive exemplars. The chapter proposes a research and practice agenda centred on multi-theoretical perspectives, adaptive governance, sustainability, and robust evaluation. It is argued that effective external stakeholder management should be embedded as a proactive, value-creating capability in project strategy, ensuring not just project delivery but enduring social legitimacy.

Digital platforms are transforming sustainability transitions in the built environment by enabling collaboration, transparency, and efficiency. This study examines how these platforms are implemented, adopted by practitioners, and create value for industry stakeholders using the DART (Dialogue, Access, Risk-benefit, Transparency) co-creation framework. Using ethnographic methods and semi-structured interviews, we consider the case study of a Dutch digital platform provider specializing in modular wooden construction. The findings highlight major challenges in sustainability transitions, including industry complexities, inefficient practices, and resistance to change. Five key practices emerged: defining a clear platform vision, improving processes, leveraging digitalization, ensuring scalability, and fostering co-creation. These practices are synthesized into an iterative framework that extends the DART model, illustrating the interplay between digital, social, and physical elements in construction. By embedding DART within a sector-specific model, this study offers a novel perspective on digital platforms as enablers of sustainability. Ultimately, these platforms promote stakeholder collaboration, enhance transparency, and contribute to sustainability goals, such as carbon reduction and circular construction.

Purpose – Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure (CI) pose serious risks to societal resilience, requiring a human-centred approach to crisis management. This study examines public responses to the Florida water plant hack by analysing social media discourse and its role in shaping cybersecurity strategies. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative case study approach applies the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief model to analyse Twitter posts from the first week following the attack. Abductive thematic analysis identifies patterns in public sentiment, emphasizing the role of social media as a real-time feedback mechanism. Lean principles are integrated to highlight stakeholder-driven cybersecurity improvements. Findings – Public responses followed a structured emotional progression, from denial and humour to anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Social media discourse revealed concerns over systemic vulnerabilities, accountability demands and calls for cybersecurity reform. These insights emphasize the importance of transparent crisis communication, proactive risk management and public engagement in strengthening cybersecurity resilience. Practical implications – Findings offer actionable insights for the public, media, private sector and government agencies into crisis response planning, fostering trust and resilience in digital infrastructure security by integrating public feedback into cybersecurity planning through structured social media analysis and iterative learning practices. Originality/value – This study uniquely applies the Kübler-Ross model to cybersecurity crises, offering a novel framework for understanding public reactions. It highlights the role of social media in bridging communication between policymakers and end users and demonstrates how lean thinking can enhance adaptive cybersecurity strategies in CI management.

Enhancing sustainability in construction is a challenging endeavour, as it requires close collaboration among multiple stakeholders within a turbulent environment. This challenge is further complicated by the existing power dynamics among these stakeholders. This study aims to explore the implications of stakeholder power dynamics for solutions designed to enhance construction sustainability. Through a review of peer-reviewed journals and conference literature, followed by thematic analysis of qualitative data, we found that stakeholder power dynamics substantially influence both the implementation and post-implementation phases of interventions intended to promote sustainability within construction projects. Additionally, the introduction of these initiatives often alters the dynamics of power within project networks, necessitating continuous monitoring and analysis of the power relationships among the stakeholders. Therefore, while it is crucial to assess how stakeholder power dynamics can inhibit or facilitate the implementation, it is equally important to understand how these power relationships will be affected post-implementation and how the new dynamics may impact the long-term sustainability of the solutions. Consequently, we identify stakeholder power dynamics as a key to sustainably win the sustainability game in construction.

Infrastructure projects can act as niches for innovation development, contribute to strategic goals of network owners, and drive broader systemic transitions. However, limited research has examined how sustainability transitions are shaped through narratives and counternarratives around infrastructure projects. Using a case study of the port of Rotterdam, we analyze how three embedded projects - Maasvlakte 2, RDM Campus, and the Hydrogen Pipeline - reflected and shaped evolving narratives and counter-narratives over 20-years. Grounded in the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP), the study demonstrates how an infrastructure owner like the Port of Rotterdam Authority (PoRA) strategically mobilized narrative framing to reshape existing regimes over time. The study contributes to the debate on project management and transition studies by highlighting how infrastructure project owners respond to transition-related tensions by shaping, defending, and adapting project narratives over time, thereby influencing sustainability trajectories.

Large infrastructure projects can often cause disruptions with those outside the immediate project area experiencing negative effects. Twitter (now X) and its ensuing online firestorms are ways these project community make themselves heard and influence the project and its societal outcome. Using the case study of the High Speed Two large infrastructure project in the U.K., this article retrieves over 950 000 tweets regarding the project from 2013 to 2019, and using dynamic topic modeling classifies 10 instances of online firestorms over this period covering environmental impacts, legislative dynamics, budget of the project, performance of the project, etc. We then theorize how online firestorms are practiced in large infrastructure projects, discussing the different topics considered in them, their sociomateriality, their difficulty in sustaining, how they can be recreated with similar new issues, how it is used as a persuasive tool, how they can change the project, and how they can be used for risk management. The findings help project managers by enabling them to understand social risks in projects and take proactive steps in addressing them.