Abstract:
Stakeholder management is the process through which companies identify, map, and prioritize their current stakeholders in order to listen to, cooperate with, or inform them. Stakeholder management is critical to the success of any project in any organization or business because it improves the core accountability mechanism. The county government should involve stakeholders in identifying and analyzing issues in order
to improve decision-making processes. The study was focused on establishing the relationship between stakeholder management and the performance of borehole water projects in Makueni County. The objectives of the study included: establishing the influence of team management, stakeholder management planning, stakeholder monitoring, and stakeholder analysis and how they affect the performance of
borehole water projects in Makueni County. The study was guided by goal-setting theory. The study targeted 135 water projects undertaken by the county government of Makueni. A census was used where 144 respondents comprising community leaders’ representatives from the 9 sub-counties of Makueni, and project team members. Both inferential and descriptive statistics were conducted. The study found that stakeholder
management had a significant relationship with the performance of borehole water projects in Makueni County. Stakeholder management could only explain 44.8% variation in the performance of borehole water projects in Makueni County. The established strong positive correlations between Team management with the performance of borehole water projects while Stakeholder Management Planning had a weak
correlation with the performance of borehole water projects. The regression analysis established that Team Management had a positive significant influence (90.3%) and relationship with the performance of borehole projects. Stakeholder
Management Planning had a positive insignificant influence (17%) and relationship with the performance of borehole projects. The study recommended consideration of stakeholder management in borehole water projects in Makueni County.
