Grounded in instrumental stakeholder theory, this study examines how six stakeholder engagement practices—stakeholder identification, communication and information sharing, participation and consultation, collaboration and partnerships, feedback and response mechanisms, and assessment and evaluation—are individually and jointly associated with project outcomes in industrial projects. Survey data from 397 professionals involved in industrial projects in Central Jordan were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), including a higher-order model, PLSpredict, and importance–performance map analysis. The results were triangulated using confirmatory factor analysis, consistent PLS, and covariance-based structural equation modelling, with additional checks for common method bias, nonlinearity, and endogeneity. All six engagement practices were positively associated with project outcomes and jointly explained 61.6\% of the variance in those outcomes, while demonstrating high out-of-sample predictive power. Assessment and evaluation \((\beta = .263)\) and participation and consultation \((\beta = .224)\) were the strongest predictors, whereas communication had the smallest unique effect. As a higher-order capability, stakeholder engagement was strongly related to project outcomes \((\beta = .785)\). Participation and consultation combined relatively high importance with the lowest observed performance level. Managers should therefore prioritise giving stakeholders a genuine voice in project decisions, institutionalise efficient and systematic routines for evaluating engagement, and manage the six practices as an integrated system. The study distinguishes the unique and joint statistical contributions of stakeholder engagement practices, highlights the relatively under-researched evaluative component of engagement, and provides evidence subjected to multiple robustness checks from industrial projects in an Arab emerging economy.
