Optimizing the stakeholder management process with the help of stakeholder management tools in the adaptive reuse of churches
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Last Updated: 6-2021
In recent years the use of churches has changed. People are not going to church as much as they used to go. There is secularization taking place in the Netherlands. As a result, it is no longer feasible to maintain all churches, and some churches are losing their function. The buildings themself are for a considerable amount of people exceptional, and it would be a loss if these buildings are demolished. To maintain the buildings, the use of adaptive reuse is necessary, and this is a complex process.
This study aims to improve the process of adaptive reuse in church projects between different stakeholders. In this context, adaptive reuse is referred to as an existing building that can no longer fulfill the current use, and a new function is trying to be found for this building, in this case, for a church. This study’s research question is: How can the stakeholder management process of the adaptive reuse projects of churches be optimized with the help of different stakeholder management tools? To answer this, a literature review was conducted; moreover, two rounds of interviews were held to see how participants perceive the process. In the second round, the focus was on the different tools that can help with that. A booklet was created where the results are shown, and this was tested with a case study. The result showed a specific group of stakeholders that is always present in these projects and that stakeholder management tools are not yet known by the people working on these projects and therefore not used.
The results showed that stakeholder management tools could improve the process by making people aware that these tools exist, making it easy to use the tools, and explaining the tools. When the tools are used, these tools can improve the process. Therefore, stakeholder management tools should be taken into account when working on these projects. For future research, it would be interesting to interview more people familiar with stakeholder management tools to develop the tools further and improve the booklet.