Stakeholders, Decisions and Narrations

This paper consists of a detailed project level examination of how a project team handles a multitude of relationships. Using methodology from an ethnographic study that followed a project for years, it describes how the project team displayed an ability to meet a variety of stakeholders representing different and often divergent interests. The project teams´ stakeholder activities came about as a carefully cultivated communication pattern. This communication involves narrating, differentiated, yet carefully balanced stories, displaying a high sensitivity to the content and framing, and not least, the timing of messages. As this happened the team was able to exercise influence on the decision making of others and the paper points to how the social participation of the team reproduced and transformed the social structure in which it took place.