Journal article 2024
Journal of Management in Engineering Vol. 40, No. 3 · Article 05024003
Value from complex projects is enacted through a sequence of personal and nonpersonal engagement practices, and the form of value being pursued shapes how organizations engage their end-users.
Complex projects often create value for people and organizations that are not traditional project stakeholders. This research shifts the level of analysis from the isolated project to the project ecology and examines how organizations within that ecology engage end-users of satellite data and services. It explains how engagement changes depending on whether organizations are communicating value, learning what users expect or working with users to turn those expectations into enacted value.
How do organizations in complex projects’ ecologies engage with their end-users to enact the value of complex projects?
The study adopts a qualitative, inductive research design in the European space project ecology. It draws on 31 open interviews with managers from organizations in the space ecology and with end-users, using grounded-theory analysis to identify recurring engagement practices. The resulting framework distinguishes personal engagement for value espoused, value expected and value enacted, alongside nonpersonal practices that enable and support those relationships.
Organizations use outbound personal engagement to espouse value, inbound engagement to understand end-users’ expected value, and iterative engagement to enact value over time. The form of value therefore shapes the engagement process rather than engagement being treated as a generic stakeholder-management activity.
Meetings, guided trials, workshops, prototyping and repeated interaction help managers clarify needs, bridge capability gaps and adapt solutions. Value enactment occurs substantially through individual relationships, not only through formal organizational communication.
Nonpersonal practices such as open calls and digital communication increase organizational permeability, while intermediaries act as translators, explorers and integrators between space organizations and end-users. This ecology-level perspective explains how capabilities and relationships distributed across multiple organizations jointly enable value.
The study contributes to project-value research by showing that understanding complex-project value requires looking beyond the project boundary. It also reverses the usual engagement-to-value logic by demonstrating that espoused, expected and enacted forms of value themselves shape how engagement is designed and conducted.
For managers in space and other high-tech, asset-intensive project ecologies, the framework offers a practical repertoire of engagement practices. It is particularly useful where end-users do not initially understand the technology, cannot articulate their needs clearly or require intermediaries to bridge technical and sector-specific languages.
Paravano, A., Locatelli, G., & Trucco, P. (2024). End-Users Engagement for Enacting Value of Complex Projects: An Ecological Perspective. Journal of Management in Engineering, 40(3), 05024003. https://doi.org/10.1061/JMENEA.MEENG-5724
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