ASSESSING STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN CASE OF BILO NOPHA WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION SECTOR, OROMIA, ETHIOPIA

The purpose of this study was assessing the project stakeholder management practices of Bilo Nopa woreda water supply and sanitation sector project. The research emphasizes on assessing how the project stakeholders where managed by assessing the practice of stakeholders management, and evaluating the challenges encountered, project stakeholder management practice impact on success of project and the practice of conflict resolution. The populations of the study were B/Nopa water supply and sanitation stakeholders such as local government employees, technical expert, project team members, and administration staffs. The study use stratified random sampling technique and the sample size was 150 out of 240 target populations. To calculate sample size the study were used Yamane formula. 150 questioners were distributed out of this140 questioner were received with 93.3% response rate. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through questionnaire. The descriptive study was used to determine the existing conditions and practices in the case under study. The quantitative data from the survey questionnaire were be sorted and analyzed with the help of SPSS 22 version software, and the qualitative data was analyzed by relating the results with literatures. The finding present that challenge of stakeholder management practice were lack of identifying stakeholder at initial stage, lack of identifying project mission, lack of good commitment, technical complexity, lack of clear definition.. of project mission, different stake holder interest and limited resource and conflict between stakeholders can be solved depending on the concerned issue and according to conflict context they use different stakeholder conflict resolution method to achieve the desire objectives From the result the researcher concluded that those stakeholders have life blood of project. Their roles, interests and expectations must be understood and managed for a project to be successful. Furthermore paper recommended administration plan and implement action to improve stakeholder management practice during the project implementation for good outcome.