Removing Barriers to Value Cocreation in Conflict-Ridden Projects: An Exploration of Inclusive Third-Party-Assisted Dialogue Practices

Incompatible stakeholder perspectives often hinder value cocreation in conflict-ridden projects, despite societal expectations for greater inclusion of market and nonmarket voices. Based on expert interviews, we explore how third-party facilitators address deteriorated stakeholder relationships in seemingly intractable conflicts. We develop a typology of four dialogue practices—decoupling, bypassing, buffering, and healing—that respond to stakeholders’ readiness to engage, shaped by vulnerability tolerance associated with suspicion or distrust and values- or malevolence-based concerns. Our findings indicate that these practices create inclusive conditions that enable stakeholders to cocreate the relational foundation for constructive interaction, thereby advancing understanding of inclusive project stakeholder engagement.