Purpose: The purpose of this research is to seek better relational strategies between formal and informal stakeholder relationships to improve megaproject performance.Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual model was developed with twenty hypotheses based on the literature review. Then a questionnaire survey was conducted, and the collected data were analyzed by Partial Least squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) for validating the proposed model. Finally, the findings were discussed by a comparative study to explain the different effects of the formal and informal relationship on megaproject performance, and the managerial implications are presented for the stakeholders to implement the relationship management in the megaprojects.Findings: The research finding reveals that formal relationship plays a dominating role in cost, quality, and labor protection; meanwhile, it is still more reliable in improving coordination, safety and environmental protection. Both formal and informal relationship is equally important towards collaboration and scheduling while the informal relationship is more effective in communication and project transparency.Originality/value: The study extends the knowledge of relationship management in the domain of the megaproject performance. It provides a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the impact of formal and informal stakeholder relationships on ten aspects of the megaproject performance by the proposed conceptual model and PLS-SEM results. The research findings contribute to the theory of relationship management on how the different influences between formal and informal stakeholder relationships lead to better megaproject performance from inter-organizational level to project and societal level.

Stakeholder conflicts are hard to avoid in the implementation of megaprojects due to the diverse interests and aims among stakeholders. The previous study does not provide much evidence on dynamic patterns of stakeholder conflicts in the project duration from the planning to the construction and handover stage. Therefore, this study established a network-based framework to analyze the dynamics of stakeholder conflicts by detecting the critical conflicts and the affected relationships among stakeholders with a 16-year case study of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project. Finally, a stakeholder-conflict map was proposed to provide management strategies considering the conflict criticalness and stakeholder participation of each stakeholder conflict. After reviewing 1,748 official documents from 2003 to 2018, the chronological features of environmental conflicts, neighboring conflicts, and traditional conflicts are detected. The changes of stakeholder relationships in the project duration are discussed by five stakeholder groups: local industry, green group, supervision group, construction group, and governmental organizations. The Mirror Z strategies of stakeholder conflicts are proposed in the phases of planning, construction, and handover, respectively.

Purpose: Relationship management evolves with dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects. However, studies on the longitudinal measurement of relationship management performance for each stakeholder in dynamic and complex project environments are lacking. The purpose of this research is to propose an NK-network evolution model to evaluate stakeholder performance on relationship management in the development of megaprojects.Design/methodology/approach: The model input includes the stakeholder-associated issues and stakeholders' relational strategies, the co-effects of which determine the internal effects of relationship management in megaprojects. The model processing simulates the stakeholder performance of relationship management under the dynamic and complex nature of megaprojects. The NK model shows the dynamic stakeholder interactions on relationship management, whereas the network model presents the complex stakeholder structures of the relationships between stakeholders and relevant issues. The model output is the evolution graph to reveal the weak stakeholder performance on relationship management in the timeline of the project duration.Findings: The research finding reveals that all stakeholders experience the plunge of stakeholder performance of relationship management at the decision-making moment of the planning stage. Construction, environmental and pressure groups may experience the hardship of relationship management at the start of the construction stage. The government is likely to suffer difficulties in relationship management in the late construction stage. Local industry groups would face challenges in relationship management in the middle of the construction stage and handover stage.Originality/value: The research provides a useful approach to measuring weak moments of relationship management for each stakeholder in various project phases, considering the dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects. The proposed model extends the current knowledge body on how to make project stakeholder analysis by modelling dynamic and complex environments of megaprojects, with bridging the knowledge domains of evolution modeling techniques and network methods.

Public concerns are essential for megainfrastructure project success, meanwhile profoundly influencing stakeholder performance. To understand the dynamics of public concerns and the project’s duration is beneficial for decision makers and project stakeholders to improve their adaptability in an uncertain project environment. Therefore, this study proposes a dynamic stakeholder-associated topic modeling approach to identify, evaluate, and manage these public concerns by learning about the experience from large quantities of unstructured project documents. The approach is composed of three parts: the Topic Over Time text-mining model, the stakeholder relevance scoring system, and the managerial map. Based on the managerial map, the proposed “Mirror Z” and “Letter N” strategies guide the decision maker and project stakeholders in determining the management priority of public concerns considering the public popularity and stakeholder relevance in different project phases. A 16-year case of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge is used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using 1,748 official project documents. The dynamics of 16 critical public concerns in the project are revealed and verified by reality. Furthermore, the management guides are summarized for decision makers, political groups, construction groups, and pressure groups. This study establishes a text-mining based method to provide useful guidelines for future megainfrastructure projects in view of stakeholder management.