Megaprojects – symbolic and sublime: an ontological review

Abstract

Purpose

Megaprojects are symbolic milestones of human history. Most megaprojects are one-of-a-kind endeavors to which traditional project management principles are neither applicable nor suitable, rendering the holistic study of megaprojects especially difficult. There is no systemic framework that can help systematically assess and guide megaprojects and megaproject research. In the absence of such a framework there is a significant risk of bias in planning the projects and the topics researched. The purpose of this paper is to present an ontological framework of megaprojects and discuss how it can help analyze individual megaprojects and synthesize the corpus of megaproject research.

Design/methodology/approach

An ontology framework of megaproject is developed by deconstructing the symbolism and purpose of megaprojects into respective dimensions and their categories. The ontological framework is then used to map the extent literature on megaproject to identify the dominant themes and gaps in the state-of-the-research.

Findings

The megaproject research has predominantly focused on select stakeholders (builders, governments, and communities), translation stages (implementation and conceptualization), and sublime (mostly economic). Other aspects of megaprojects have received little or no attention.

Originality/value

The paper presents an ontological framework to holistically capture the symbolism and sublime of megaprojects. The framework is complete, expansive, and grounded, yet simple, parsimonious, and innovative. It is a tool for decision makers more than a formal ontology readable by machines.

Citation

Syn, T. and Ramaprasad, A. (2019), "Megaprojects – symbolic and sublime: an ontological review", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 12 No. 2, pp. 377-399. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMPB-03-2018-0054