The Research of Stakeholder Power Impact on Project Implementation

Purpose of the article: The article show summarized information about stakeholders and their role in project implementation based on literature review. The second part of the article is dedicated for the research about stakeholder influence on project implementation. The only condition to participate in the survey was managing projects, no matter if the company position name was project manager, manager of projects, project coordinator, project specialist, etc. Although the respondents are employed in the area of south Poland, they implement projects all over Poland. The research tool was a questionnaire which was sent by e-mail to the respondents, after earlier information contact which was executed by a phone call or via e-mail. The whole research began with a pilot study. The aim of this stage was checking the structure of the questionnaire and excluding incomprehensible questions. 90 project managers from the above mentioned research area were invited to join the project. From the 90 invited people 62 sent back a completed questionnaire (the success rating was 68,8%) by e-mail. The questionnaire was made by cafeteria questions and right questions. Methodology/methods: The research was done by a questionnaire with twenty two question, which was divided into three parts. The first part was the imprint, which consisted of three questions. The second part consisted of two questions, which concerned the way of defining the word ‘stakeholder’. The third part concerned the topic of the research and consisted of seventeen questions. The survey has been made among project managers who are working in companies located on the territory of south Poland. Scientific aim: The aim of the article is presenting the results of the research which was done, to show the research results of project stakeholder influence on the project (without dividing stakeholders into groups) implementation. Findings: The results received from the survey in the process of analysis and interpretation allow to put forward a thesis that stakeholders as a whole group (without using any division) are significant for the implementation of the whole project. Their impact is so important that it is possible to tell that they decide also about the project success or failure, and it is necessary to manage them not only in the planning phase by doing recognition of them, but also in the realisation phase (by estimating their impact and business which they have in project implementation) and project closing phase. Conclusions: The respondents show that stakeholders affect every area in large extent or very big extent. The fact has been proved in table 1 which shows the most frequently chosen answers by responders. However, by conducted analysis by the standard deviation it is possible to see a large dispersion of the results. It should result in deepening the research. Keywords: project management, stakeholder, project stakeholder, research, respondends, servey JEL Classification: M15, M1