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Managing sustainability in a complex urban development project : a stakeholder engagement approach to a wicked problem

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Managing sustainability in a complex urban development project : a stakeholder engagement approach to a wicked problem

The aim of this Master’s Thesis study is to uncover how a stakeholder engagement approach might improve the overall sustainability management of complex urban development projects, and contribute to sustainability management research in the area of stakeholder engagement that calls for additional attention, particularly in the construction field. The urgent need for sustainability transition coupled with the on-going process of urbanization, suggests that both theoretical insight and effective practical action is needed to ensure that urban growth can be decoupled from detrimental environmental and societal effects.

Urban development brings together a host of actors, and the stakeholder field of any given urban development project is wide and increasingly complex, leading to a need for collaboration among a host of heterogeneous actors. An answer to how stakeholder engagement can help with sustainability management in complex construction projects is sought in this study through a review of relevant literature and a two-part empirical data collection involving the internal stakeholders of the case project, Trigoni, and expert stakeholders in the field of sustainable urban development.

The complexity inherent to sustainability is examined here through the wicked problems discourse. This approach is determined particularly suitable for the intersection between the linear problem-solving models traditionally – and successfully – applied in construction projects for general management purposes and the complexity and uncertainties that come with sustainability-incorporation. A conceptual framework structured around six identified categories of uncertainty is utilized in this study to explore the dichotomy between fragmentation and coherence and to discover how the wicked problem of sustainability-incorporation should be dealt with in the context of complex urban development projects. Based on this study it seems that stakeholder engagement, when carried out in an effective and goal-directed manner, is essential to harnessing collective intelligence and boosting coherence. Yet, it is not enough in itself to prevent fragmentation and should therefore be accompanied by an appropriate sustainability management frame- work that takes project life-cycle into account.

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