Resumo

Among the diverse and complementary interpretations of stakeholders' practical meaning are those that understand that without their involvement, the organization itself would not exist. The same relevance achieved by stakeholders in organizations, in general, extends to projects and project management. Therefore, project management studies and practices in organizations must necessarily reflect the recognition, meaning, and importance of considering stakeholders as part of their management process. With STHM it will be possible to meet projects’ objectives, and hence, the company´s ones.

Considering the growing relevance that the Project Stakeholder Management (PSHM) process has received among project management studies and practices, we think this is an opportunity to analyze and discuss the subject deeply. To this end, the purpose of this study is to answer the following research question: Do stakeholder management practices contribute to project performance in organizations? Do attributes of Companies, Projects and Team Members affect that relationship?

A new term, ‘stakeholder analysis’, is seen as the most widespread approach for better understanding the interests of related parties. It consists of activities that can be considered a holistic procedure that aims to understand and evaluate the system. Regarding PP, we confirmed the range of a conceptual discussion, from technical perspectives, such as meeting deadlines and budgets, passing through the commercial perspective of projects’ output and organizations’ internal issues, such as team satisfaction and added experience, to strategic aspects, such as value-added to the organization.

Methodology This is a quantitative and correlational research based on empirical data. The final conceptual model investigated the associations between two second-order constructs - SHMP and PP - which are supported by their respective first-order constructs. The participant’s professional experience in projects was the only one moderate variable included in the analysis. Project team members were the source of data, collected through tself-administered electronic questionnaires. In SEM- Structural Equation Modelling analysis the final sample comprised 86 valid observations.

Results indicate a positive contribution relationship between SHM practices and PP when combined with participant´s experience in projects. This relationship also occurs between STHMP and the five dimensions of PP. The first relationship can be considered stronger, given the higher percentage of variations in PP explained by variations in SHMP - R2 of 52.2% -, value not reached individually by the dimensions of PP - R2 between 26.2% and 46.6%-. All models have quality, with a significant effect, as their R2 is above 26% (Cohen, 1988).

This study showed that Stakeholder management practices associated with the participant’s professional experience in projects contribute to Project performance, positively and satisfactorily, as they correspond to more than 52% of the variation in Project performance. They also contribute to Project Performance dimensions, in a positive and satisfactory way, corresponding to more than 26% of their performance variation regarding the dimensions Efficiency, Team Satisfaction, Satisfaction of Customer/user’, ‘Result for the business’, and ‘Preparation for the future’.

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