Mega-projects and Social Impact Evaluation: The Difficult (Un)Balanced Inclusion of Social Needs in Current Practices

The understanding of the interactions between megaproject and social impact assessment disciplines is crucial and an effective implementation of a multi-dimensional perspective has been positively correlated with project success and failures avoidance. Current literature aims to encompass this role, extending the analysis of the impacts to the broader concept of stakeholders and local communities impacted by the project. The aim of the Authors is that these preliminary findings can inspire further and deeper research on these topics, looking for and integrated approach to include all of them into a cohesive framework for managing the social pillar in megaprojects management. The literature review leads to the identification of three different research areas related to the issue of the evaluation of the megaprojects from a social perspective: a first one related to the issue of power and equality that looks coherent with the critical management agenda both from a methodological and theoretical point of view; a second one related to the concept of social space as a construct to adopt in order to enlarge the alternatives in the evaluation process; the third one that depicts the role of technology and social media to manage stakeholders.