Managing Communications with Local Communities in Large Projects

Large projects are designed to change the shape of society by bringing economic values for a wide range of stakeholders. They are however, prone to influence cultural and societal values of society and therefore, project organizations need to have a better understanding of demands and values of the society in which the project is deployed. Considering local communities, this research tries to deduct a theory for perceptions of local communities from activities and behavior of project organization. The method of this research is case study and it uses documents from companies as well as interviews from three groups of stakeholders: project organization, local communities and local government. The role of local government is considered as the communicator standing between local communities and project organizations. The results of this research show that transparency, social and environmental sustainability and the organization background highly influences local community’s perception of the behavior of project organization activities. This research makes contributions to theory, by building the model from the local community’s view point and to practice, by giving a more clear view of the benefits of communications with local communities.