Stakeholder Opposition Risk in Public-Private Partnerships

This paper discusses stakeholder opposition risk. The analysis of project risks in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) has traditionally focused more on political, construction, finance and other market-related risks with little attention paid to stakeholder opposition. The paper looks at the role of stakeholders in PPP projects and how they impact the success of projects, and contends that it is the misallocation of this risk to the private sector party, based on the principles of extant stakeholder theory that leads to public opposition to projects. Therefore, the stakeholder accountability theory is proposed as this approach properly recognizes the roles of both the public and private sector parties in the management of stakeholder opposition risk.