Stakeholder Management in University-Industry Collaboration Programs: A Case Study

Poor stakeholder management repeatedly comes up as one of the main reasons for unsuccessful projects. This issue takes a higher dimension when we look at the inter-organizational context, where traditional stakeholder management practices may be insufficient. This paper investigates stakeholder management applied to the context of collaborative research and development (R&D) programs between university and industry, a particular form of inter-organizational relationships. A large case study involving an R&D collaboration between a university and an industry in Portugal, collaborating with each other for more than seven years, with 170 million euros of investment, is analyzed based on participant observation and document analysis. A methodology for stakeholder management in collaborative programs between university and industry is proposed, which includes several systematic practices. For example, in the process of identify stakeholders, it is suggested to identify the expectations, required contributions and previous experience of stakeholders, and in the process of monitor stakeholder engagement comes, to define KPIs for measuring their engagement evolution. This is a methodology that considers the subjective aspects of human action and, therefore, applies tools and techniques that fully involve the stakeholder, such as surveys to monitor their self-engagement. The methodology can be used as a starting point for the systematic development of stakeholder management processes in any large collaborative project and program.