Business Ecosystem in Built Environment – Stakeholders and their Classification

Stakeholders – both internal and external to the ecosystem –are an inherent part of a business ecosystem. Business ecosystem concept was first introduced by James F. Moore in his seminal article in 1993 ‘Predators and Prey – A new ecology of competition’ and has been widely addressed ever since particularly by strategy and innovation scholars. However, there is only a limited amount of research on business ecosystems in the context of built environment. Particularly a lifecycle perspective on business ecosystems and their stakeholders is missing, even though the complex nature of built environment projects would benefit from a systematic analysis of stakeholders from the early initiation stage to the maintenance phases. In this study we apply the stakeholder salience framework to a business ecosystem of a complex built environment project over its lifecycle. The application of the stakeholder salience framework as a case study provides novel insights and new knowledge of the classification of the ecosystem’s stakeholders and of how diverse stakeholders may contribute to the system level goal of the project over its lifecycle. The results of the empirical study indicate a need to build deeper understanding of the stakeholders’ role changes over the project lifecycle in construction business. Managers can use the findings to define the key stakeholders, focus the efforts on the most salient stakeholders and to model the business ecosystem.