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.

In recent years, the use of timber as a sustainable construction material has gained increasing attention driven by environmental policy incentives and growing demand for low-carbon alternatives. The idea of separate approaches to the social and technical systems upon transitioning towards timber could no longer suffice for the complex construction sector. We therefore investigate, (1) what are the socio-technical dynamics driving the transition to timber building projects? and (2) how can the transition to timber be facilitated within the complex and multifaceted residential construction industry from a Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework perspective? The socio-technical dynamics identified following the analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews in the Netherlands are leadership, standardization, product-based construction, stakeholder alignment, and business case viability. Theoretically, we argue that the timber transition requires a comprehensive approach across production systems and service delivery. Practically, this research identifies enabling processes that can support learning and legitimacy in timber construction projects.

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.

Studies of projects, project-based organisations and project organising have reached a pivotal juncture, marked by an increasing need to innovate methodologically. Project research has traditionally been dominated by survey-based quantitative approaches aimed at measuring variables and identifying statistical patterns across large samples. While these methods have advanced the foundational body of knowledge in project management, they are increasingly critiqued for their limitations in accessing the depth and complexity of lived project experiences (Green and Sergeeva, 2019). Early survey instruments often relied on close-ended, pre-categorised items, factor-based approaches, offering minimal scope for respondents to elaborate on meanings or experiences (Lupton, 1993). As project contexts become more complex, dynamic, and socially embedded, this limitation has stimulated a methodological turn in project studies towards more qualitative, interpretive, and context-sensitive research approaches. There is a need for more and novel methods which could capture the diversity in projects and the different platforms that project stakeholders are active in. This Special Issue of Project Leadership and Society brings to the forefront the importance of novel research methodologies, methods, and data that can advance our understanding of projects and project organising in contemporary society. The objective is not merely to diversify the tools available to researchers but to reimagine how knowledge is produced in a field that is inherently interdisciplinary, practice-oriented, and deeply embedded in real-world challenges (Pink et al., 2010). The special collection of papers responds to long-standing calls for more reflexive, engaged, and multi-modal research practices in the social sciences (Pierce, 2008; Arino et al., 2016). [...]

The construction sector remains one of the most inefficient and unsustainable industries, due in part to the chronic failure to learn from past projects. Within infrastructure contracting, learning is further hampered by project isolation, staff shortages, and commercial pressures. These conditions make it difficult to evaluate past performance and embed lessons into future cost estimation. This study's objective is to explore how learning from previous projects can improve the accuracy of cost estimation, by analyzing current practices, identifying barriers and enablers, and recommending strategies. Drawing on 23 interviews in the Dutch road sector, the research identifies time pressure, leadership priorities, and fragmented responsibilities as key barriers. Teams consistently prioritize preparing new bids over evaluating completed work, leaving little room for structured reflection. Revenue targets and skilled personnel shortages further reduce the time and capacity available for learning. While an open and collaborative team culture enables informal knowledge sharing, such exchanges rarely extend beyond individual projects. The study examines how leadership influences this dynamic, finding that while managers express support for learning, operational pressures often override reflection. Leaming remains spontaneous unless visibly prioritized & structurally planned. To analyze where and how learning breaks down, the paper applies the multi-level learning framework for project-based organizations (PBO's) treating projects as temporary organizations embedded in a wider coordinating structure. Based on this lens, the study introduces a seventh learning process; "Iterating", to capture dynamic loops of reflection, adjustment, and knowledge integration during project execution. The findings offer insight into what it takes to institutionalize learning in fast-paced project environments: leadership that creates space for reflection, routines that embed feedback into project delivery, and cultural trust that enables open exchange.

In recent years, municipalities have been recognised for their crucial role in protecting cities from climate change impacts by adopting mitigative and adaptive strategies to enhance climate resilience. However, anchoring these strategies demands multiple interventions, which are often hindered by the current siloed organization of departments and disciplines. An integrated infrastructure design approach (IIDA) can co-create a process that converges sectors, disciplines, and actors’ interests to tackle this challenge. To this end, this research explores how municipalities can effectively implement IIDA to enhance climate-resilient infrastructures. The city of Rotterdam served as a case study involving a thematic analysis of 21 interviews with internal actors of the municipality. This study identified 19 key factors influencing a municipality’s effectiveness in using an integrated design approach to enhance climate resilience. These influential factors belong to six different dimensions: Human Capacity, Organisational Culture, Governance, Communication, Project Development Process and Finance. The findings suggest that it is essential that actors within municipalities have soft skills such as proactivity and open-mindedness for collaboration. Furthermore, it is necessary to foster an innovative and collaborative culture to enable the development of pilot projects. This, in turn, helps update standards and scale up implementation by aligning integration at the three management levels: strategic, program, and project. Based on the findings, we recommend establishing a multi-dimensional baseline, setting up a communication strategy and tools, build human and institutional capacity through pilots and living labs. This can help municipalities implement an integrated infrastructure design in their organisation, offering a promising future in designing climate-resilient infrastructures.

In de ambitie de uitstoot van broeikasgassen te verminderen is een centrale rol weggelegd voor groen beton, met een aanzienlijk kleinere CO2-voetafdruk dan gewoon beton [1]. Om een sectorbrede overstap naar dit materiaal mogelijk te maken, moeten economische, institutionele, sociale en technische obstakels worden overwonnen [1, 2 en 3]. Op de TU Delft is de dynamiek rondom deze betontransitie in Nederland onderzocht. Dat onderzoekt richtte zich op hoe opdrachtgevers de integratie kunnen versnellen. Daarbij zijn drie casussen geanalyseerd.

In the face of climate urgency and rapid urban change, buildings must become more adaptable to extend their lifespan and reduce environmental impact. Yet, adaptability is often undermined by project delivery methods (PDMs) that are not well equipped to manage, plan, and deliver long-term lifecycle requirements, even though in terms of design, it is technically possible, particularly in modular construction. This research examines how PDMs can be restructured to enhance building adaptability. Using a comparative case study of two Dutch modular projects (a campus office expansion and a relocatable housing development) this study applies a Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and RACI framework to analyze the alignment of technical design, process workflows, and stakeholder roles. The analysis reveals a critical socio-technical misalignment: while modular systems provided technical capability, adaptability was consistently compromised by process-related barriers, including delayed technical coordination, missing lifecycle documentation, and unclear post-use accountability. Findings are synthesized into a structured delivery framework that integrates disassembly planning, modular reuse logic, and iterative feedback loops from the project's outset. This research provides a practical approach for project managers to proactively structure delivery for adaptability. It contributes to the field by demonstrating that successful adaptability is not merely a technical feature but an output of a holistic alignment of the project delivery system.

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.

Community engagement is pivotal for the success of infrastructure megaprojects, especially in the operations phase, where the community evaluates whether to use the service or boycott it. There is a need to understand what actions projects take for the cultural embedding of the project with stakeholders and how the community expresses their experiences in the modern era through social media. To bridge this gap, this study delves into social media exchanges during the operational phase of four metro rail projects in India—Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, and Nagpur—to understand their commonalities and inform future endeavors. The community in all four megaprojects accepted the focus on sustainability, cultural embedding, and inclusivity. The research underscores how attentively listening to the community via social media channels can facilitate the development of more effective megaprojects and generate greater societal value.

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.

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.

Infrastructure projects are undertaken as public–private partnership (PPP) projects to increase the capacity for delivering multiple projects and to bring in the expertise of the private sector. There is a need to investigate whether the community perception of an infrastructure project delivered in PPP mode differs from a similar project delivered in non-PPP mode. To address this gap, we contrast the social media exchanges of the Hyderabad and the Kochi metro rail project in India. The community in both megaprojects was concerned about accidents, parking charges, and operational issues and accepted the focus on sustainability and inclusivity. Public perceptions on social media showed that the PPP project attracted more targeted criticism – particularly concerning fare structures and operational issues – often directed specifically at the private partner rather than the government. The research shows how listening to the community through social media can help structure better PPP and non-PPP megaprojects and create more societal impact.

Migration is a defining feature of today’s world, shaping economies, cultures, and communities. In sectors such as construction renovation and textile repair, migrant workers contribute to sustainability practices, providing jobs that in the destination countries, citizens do not want or, more often, are not able to do. Yet, despite their contributions, migrant workers often face barriers to integration and recognition as skilled professionals. Depending on the context, migrants’ skills can be exploited/underpaid, scorned, underestimated, neglected but also recognized and valued.

Infrastructure projects undergo multiple changes throughout their lifecycle, adapting to new mobilities, technologies and environments. We build on the System of Systems (SoS) theoretical concept to understand the implications of such infrastructure transformations, specifically when projects move from a single purpose to hosting multiple functions. Using multiple case studies in Europe, we investigate which functions will likely be added to the original infrastructure and the rationale for adding these functions. Therefore, we expand upon the theoretical concepts of circularity, resilience, and social sustainability, wherein multifunctional infrastructure adapts, renews, and complements existing infrastructure.

In this article, co-authors Johan Ninan, Stewart Clegg, Ashwin Mahalingam, and Shankar Sankaran reflect on their research interests and the inspiration behind their recent article, “Governance Through Trust: Community Engagement in an Australian City Rebuilding Precinct,” found in the Project Management Journal.

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.

In this article, we discuss the concept of safetywashing defined as the strategic practice of promoting, marketing, and branding of safety practices without full disclosure of negative information to improve the image of the organization. The research seeks to answer two questions: first, what are safetywashing strategies? Second, what are the effects of safetywashing strategies? To study this, 106 news articles relating to construction safety in India, as well as 439 reader comments on them, were systematically collected and their contents analyzed to compile multiple case studies which had evidence of safetywashing. We analyze multiple instances from these case studies to build theoretical insight into these strategies and their effects, using an approach anchored in a social exchange theoretical framework. We highlight different safetywashing strategies employed in the construction sector, such as safety as a project objective, explaining safety initiatives, associating with pioneers, as well as investing in safety. These strategies lead to accepting of organizations, prioritizing safety, and diverting focus, all of which have different implications for safety practice in the construction industry.

As cities evolve, navigating the complex interplay between social and technical elements is crucial for achieving sustainable urban development. This paper uses a case-study approach and applies actor-network theory (ANT) to understand the sociotechnical complexities of urban transformation, with a specific focus on transport projects at the municipal level. ANT serves as a qualitative analytical framework to investigate the successful restoration of Catharijnesingel in Utrecht. Interviews with ten field experts have provided valuable insights into the transformation process, revealing the underlying paradigms at play. Specifically, this study used Michel Callon’s (1984) concept of translation to analyze how agency is enacted in decision-making processes. By focusing this research on actornetworks related to the theme of sustainable transport, the study has identified five transformation mechanisms involved in removing the 20th-century city highway and restoring the original canal, offering valuable lessons for similar projects in various contexts. This study contributes to the existing ANT literature by presenting a robust framework for analyzing actor-networks in transport infrastructure transformation projects, thereby opening new avenues for future research and practical applications in urban planning.