An Identity Work Framework for Community Stakeholder Engagement in Infrastructure Development

Traditional stakeholder management approaches to community engagement during infrastructure development have frequently resulted in conflict, community resistance and often failure. In this paper we propose an identity-based stakeholder engagement framework to help infrastructure teams reconceptualize community stakeholders’ interpretation of infrastructure development from identity threat to opportunity. We present three core goals to enable this to occur: creating identity security, cueing alternative social identities, and extending identity temporalities. We offer empirical illustrations and practical advice on how these goals might be achieved, as well as an agenda for future research.

• Offers strategy for better understanding of community identity and appreciation for past, present and future identities for engagement on Infrastructure Development projects.

• Improved Community Engagement and Community Satisfaction.

• Achieves co-creation, co-evolution, and co-sustenance of value for stakeholders and project leaders.

• Builds on stakeholder engagement literature using social identity theory.

• Contributes to the stakeholder management literature with respect to community stakeholders.

• Offers a model for stakeholder engagement using multiplexity and temporality of identities.