Grandstanding? The elusive process of shaping megaproject symbolism

Abstract

This paper aims to disentangle the processes of shaping the symbolism of megaprojects and their influence on stakeholders' engagement. We define symbolism as the aura of impressions, namely emotions, meanings and action propensities, emerging around a project and its various representations, as a result of largely incontrollable individual and social processes. We develop a process model that theorizes symbolism shaping by distinguishing two aspects. The first, expressing, captures the creation of representations that convey to stakeholders various aspects of the project and of its impacts, relying on either abstract or concrete vehicles. The second, impressing, captures how stakeholders process these representations by emphasizing either cognitive or affective mechanisms. Relying on the conjunction of the alternative paths for these subprocesses, we elaborate four types of megaproject symbolism and discuss their nature, the influence that stakeholders can exert over their shaping, and their consequences for various aspects of stakeholder engagement.