Understanding Stakeholders’ Influence on Project Success with a New SNA Method: A Case Study of the Green Retrofit in China

Stakeholders strongly influence project success, particularly for complex projects with heterogeneous stakeholders, and hence, understanding their influence is essential for project management and implementation. This paper proposes an original model based on social network analysis (SNA), which first introduces critical success factors (CSFs) as intermediate variables between stakeholders and project success. The model can demonstrate the interrelation between stakeholders and CSFs, and the results can reveal how stakeholders influence project success. Green retrofit is a typical type of complex project. The stakeholder relationship in green retrofit projects is more complex than in new projects, since more stakeholders (e.g., tenants and facility managers) who have particular interrelations (e.g., lease contract and split incentives between owners and tenants) are involved. Therefore, a case study of green retrofit in China was conducted to illustrate how the proposed model works. The results indicated the priorities and similarities of stakeholders in green retrofit. Stakeholders are categorized into five clusters according to their relationship. Based on the results, the important role of stakeholders in green retrofit projects was discussed. The main contribution of this study is providing a novel method to reveal how stakeholders influence the success of complex projects.