Understanding Project Stakeholder Planning, Identification and Engagement: A Phenomenological Approach

This research explored stakeholder management practices by conducting qualitative interviews with 71 seasoned project managers. Through phenomenological principles and inductive coding, findings revealed inconsistencies in stakeholder planning, identification, and engagement. The research underscores the importance of early stakeholder identification using both formal and informal techniques. Additionally, it identifies a gap between academic literature and actual practitioner methodologies, particularly regarding stakeholder registers, mapping, and value propositions. The study suggests a need for structured and standardized stakeholder management strategies, especially given the evolving stakeholder dynamics in projects. The findings offer actionable insights for professionals and organizations seeking to improve stakeholder management techniques

Optimization of Lean and Agile Supply Chain Management Practices in the Aviation Industry

Organizations that provide products and/or services must be able to execute fast, adaptive supply and (fluctuating) demand practices. From producers to consumers, and every stakeholder involved throughout the supply chain network processes, a collaborative relationship promotes sharing information that is beneficial to all. This long-term relationship then flourishes and in return stimulates the growth, health, and stability of the supply chain. Understanding the organizational processes and requirements is a complex endeavor. However, with technological advances and with the right type of data collected, it is possible to optimize entire supply chain networks. This research study, seeks to provide an insight into theoretical supply and demand optimization methods and help identify optimal selection of variables and types of data needed to analyze lean and agile methodology approaches in order to show how to blend a lean, continuous, flow approach, with agile, flexible, fluctuations in customer demands, for consistent tactical and operational outcomes across supply chain networks in the aviation industry

Achieving a Competitive Advantage through Ethical Business Practices: An Ethnographical Case Study

Ethical leadership can be a key driver of corporate behavior but it is an individual's sense of ethics that has an impact on business success. The specific problem was that despite the plethora of academic, government, and industry studies, it remained unclear whether investing in ethics provided a competitive advantage for businesses. The purpose of this qualitative, ethnographic case study was to examine how the internal stakeholders in a single business defined and applied ethics and what elements of the business culture and competitive environment affected decision-making. The research was a practical application of the stakeholder theory, normative ethics and competitive analysis theory. The dissertation research was conducted using JWD Technologies (pseudonym) which is a for profit engineering and manufacturing business located in the southeastern United States. Through this research, the business values and culture were demonstrated through a focus on pride in the quality of the delivered product through a disciplined, continuous improvement, cooperation and teamwork with the customer and the worksite team, and leadership excellence. Key leadership characteristics included being engaged, accessible, credible, trustworthy, stable, and able to relate to the people. The keys for optimizing the culture were moral fortitude including a strong ethical tone, voicing opinions, transparent communications, and individual accountability, consistent with prior literature. The informants demonstrated that effective ethical behavior includes going beyond the practices required by law, consistent with prior literature. Finally, the informants identified ethical values used to achieve future business to deliver a differential value. Recommendations for practice include the practical application of the stakeholder theory, normative ethics, and competitive analysis theory and recommendations on the use of ethnography in a business ethics environment. Recommendations on future research include broadening research applicability with a focus on a broader stakeholder set, competition, and competitive advantage to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and ethics theory application with a focus on reputation and ethical leadership flow down