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This paper examines how expert practitioners define project governance and develop a project governance system that enables strategy implementation through projects.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with project governance experts and analyzed the data using thematic analysis. Subsequently, based on the stratified ontology of critical realism, retroductive theoretical triangulation was employed to explain the themes identified using five emergent theoretical perspectives.

By integrating the themes extracted from the data with the emergent theoretical perspectives, a framework was developed outlining the general process through which practitioners make sense of the concept of project governance, formulate an appropriate project governance system for their respective organizations and manage its evolution over time. Furthermore, a holistic approach to project governance was proposed that spans the entire investment life cycle of projects and enables the implementation of strategy through projects.

This study attempts to make sense of the diverse interpretations of the concept of project governance adopted by practitioners. It further summarizes valuable insights from expert practitioners for formulating and enacting effective project governance systems.

This study contributes to the governance-as-practice perspective and the growing stream of literature that views projects as investments. The project governance system is positioned as the steward of an organization's investments in projects.

This study examines how project uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and participant uncertainty) affect guanxi and contractual governance and assesses the mediating role of guanxi governance between project uncertainty and contractual governance.

Data were collected in two stages from Chinese contractors. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine construction engineering project practitioners in different contracts as a pilot for questionnaire designing. Second, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with professionals and practitioners of construction enterprises to collect primary data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test seven hypotheses based on data collected from 198 respondents.

Project environmental uncertainty promotes the use of guanxi governance, while project participant uncertainty hinders it; the relationship between both types of uncertainty and contractual governance is the same as with guanxi governance. Furthermore, guanxi governance promotes contractual governance and partially mediates project environmental uncertainty and contractual governance and a complete mediating role between project participant uncertainty and contractual governance.

As the interviewed samples are mainly from China, the study should be replicated using large representative samples from East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of guanxi governance. Further, while the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the questionnaire data in this study align with the standards, a larger sample size would improve the reliability and validity of the research results and better represent the overall work situation of contractors, owners and public policymakers.

The results provide insights into project governance research and have implications for construction practitioners in deploying governance-related resources.

This study aims to further the understanding of multi-level analysis in inter-organisational relationships by investigating the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination in inter-organisational projects (IOPs) on sub-system and project levels.

The authors use the Viable Systems Model as a framework to analyse inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination by adopting a multiple-case study.

The findings illustrate how governance and coordination mechanisms exhibit a filter-down effect on lower sub-systems while cooperation influence is confined within each sub-system. While remarking the importance of specific sub-systems on the overall project performance, the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination across sub-systems appears to be complex, with governance influencing cooperation and coordination, whereas cooperation and coordination influence each other with an incremental effect.

This study defines two propositions that explain how multiple levels of analysis (project and sub-systems) can support the governance of large inter-organisational projects. The authors elaborate theory on the interplay of inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination.

Due to the frenetic and dynamic working conditions ascribed to architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) project organizations, enormous research has addressed the poor mental health propensity of project management practitioners (PMPs). However, research has not considered the distant factors related to organizational design causing poor mental health. Therefore, this study addresses the problem by integrating institutional theory, agency theory and resource-based theory (RBT) to explore the relationship between organizational design elements: project governance, knowledge management, integrated project delivery, project management skills and mental health management indicators. Examples of mental health management indicators include social relationships, work-life balance and project leadership.

Purposive sampling method was adopted to collect survey data from 90 PMPs in 60 AEC firms in Australia. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilized to test the relationship between the variables.

The research found that project governance, knowledge management and integrated project delivery are positively correlated to mental health management indicators. However, the research finding suggests that project management skills have a negative impact on mental health management indicators.

The findings offer guidelines to AEC firms on achieving positive mental health management outcomes through concentration on project governance, knowledge management and integrated project delivery. It further calls for a reconsideration of existing project management skills causing poor mental health management outcomes.

Inter-organisational collaboration is becoming increasingly important in complex projects; some project customers even formally require evidence of collaborative competence from potential providers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the governance of collaboration and the ways in which it is enacted in practice for complex projects.

The study is based on a qualitative analysis of 29 semi-structured interviews, primary data from meetings and events supported by secondary data, including standards and industry-specific contract templates.

The paper identifies how collaboration can be effectively governed in complex projects through the emerging role of the collaboration standard and its impact on contractual and relational governance mechanisms. The standard sets higher-level institutional guidelines that affect the way in which collaboration is governed in complex projects. It helps formalise informal relational practices whilst also providing guidelines for building flexibility in contracts by including coordination- and adaptation-oriented provisions conducive to collaboration.

The paper demonstrates the emerging role of the collaboration standard and its influence on contractual and relational mechanisms deployed in complex projects. It shows how the standard can formalise and codify informal collaborative practices and help transfer related learning across projects, thereby contributing towards the dual requirement for standardisation and flexibility in project settings.

Governance of projects is a dynamic process that involves the interaction of agents, opportunities, rules, instruments and legitimacy. The authors conducted a case study of the governance of exploratory projects in public procurement of innovation in a local government. The authors consider both contextual aspects that impose requirements on the procurement process and procedural aspects of how the different actors interact with each other. In particular, the purpose of this study is to investigate how actors make sense of the projects and how governance evolves over their lifetime.

To engage in an open-system investigation of exploratory public procurement of innovation (PPI) projects, the authors adopted a case study approach in which they collected a variety of data including publicly available documentary evidence, interviews with project participants and project evaluation reports. The authors used transcripts of 17 interviews with project participants conducted independently to gain an initial understanding of the case. They conducted additional semi-structured interviews with projects’ participants (ten interviews in total) and used theory-driven analysis (Pawson and Tilley, 1997) based on Borrás and Edler’s (2014) model of governance.

The authors identified four stages – problem identification, partner selection, partnership development and evaluation and commercialization – these projects. The case demonstrates how governance changes in each stage and at the three levels of policy, network and projects. Each level has its own governance pillar. The results suggest that a multi-level perspective (MLP) can be a fruitful framework to study governance of projects in these contexts.

The authors note that the number of participants in the network of this case is not very large. Other organizations that aim to adopt PPI may need to pay attention to the complementarity and the number of partners in the network. In this case, organizations were motivated to collaborate as each had its own objectives which were distinct but complementary.

Co-creation of value is currently a topic of interest for public policy reform across the globe. The case indicates that procurement for innovation requires a degree of coordinated change across governmental departments, such as planning, legal and procurement to implement the policy and related support systems. Furthermore, the authors observed that a portfolio approach to inter-organizational collaboration with different partners was effective. Each partner has its own objective, but they complement one another. A portfolio of different, though complementary, inter-organizational arrangements enables various complementary instruments and various logics to be used.

The public sector is an important actor in driving innovation in products and services that fulfill societal needs. This is explored in public procurement of innovation. In this process, several partners from private and public sectors are involved. This partnership is mainly used to co-create the value and encourage innovation to benefit the citizens. However, to serve this goal, the case indicates that procurement for innovation requires a degree of coordinated change across governmental departments, such as planning, legal and procurement to implement the policy and related support systems. For this phenomenon MLP should be used as an inclusive framework to study socio-technical change.

The analysis of the case presented in this study demonstrates that even in the case of temporary public procurement of innovation projects, governance is layered. The three pillars of governance not only interact at each layer but also communicate across layers. Even though the interaction of the three pillars of governance is well established in the literature on socio-technical change, the interaction across levels in the context of temporary projects is novel. The authors contribute to the literature on governance of such projects by highlighting the stratification of governance.

Project governance has been linked to project success because top management support is necessary for projects to succeed. However, top managers are time poor and it is not clear which project governance mechanisms are effective for project success. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with success.

This is a quantitative study. A theoretical model of project governance was developed and tested with secondary industry data gathered from 51 global organisations and 66,817 responses.

The results found five project governance mechanisms (Vision, Change, Sponsor, KPI and Monitor) significantly correlate with project success and are effective at different stages in the project lifecycle.

Earlier research has found a relationship between project governance and project success but it has not been specific enough to guide top managers in practice. This is the first research to take this next step and identify project governance mechanisms that correlate with project success. One finding of this research that has particular value is the identification of when in the project lifecycle a particular governance mechanism is most effective.

Trust in how projects are managed is important because leaders have the power to make decisions that impact project outcomes. Steering committees provide strategic direction and governance for projects and they support the project manager. The purpose of this paper is to study how steering committees contribute to governance and trust. More specifically, the aim is to explore, which steering committee features and governance mechanisms are important for building trust.

Empirical data were collected using in-depth interviews. The studied case concerns the Norwegian Navy’s experience with a steering committee in the project of building new frigates.

Findings show that the steering committee had a significant impact on governance and trust in the project. The identified governance mechanisms performed by the steering committee included: control and performance measurement, support, decision-making, relationship management, reporting, resource management, risk management and strategic focus.

Despite the limitations of studying only a single case, the findings may provide general learning, as well as important practical information and experience to managers interested in the role of the project steering committee.

The paper provides key managerial implications that project owners should take into account when organizing a steering committee. The analysis identifies composition, competence, authority, responsibility, commitment and continuity as steering committee features that contribute to building trust. Findings particularly highlight the choice to include external steering committee members to be successful.

This research extends the current understanding of how through different features and governance mechanisms a steering committee can build trust in the management of projects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the governance in project organising where owner organisations interface with the temporary project organisations that they initiate. This interface between the two types of organisation represents an opportunity for innovation.

In total, 25 narrative interviews were conducted with managers who work in permanent owner and operator organisations and temporary project organisations. It is combined with the analysis of textual narratives represented in institutional reports (APM, IPA, PMI).

The findings show that it is the flexible and balanced approach to governance that allows innovation to emerge. Strong capable innovative owners play crucial role in creating the corporate governance framework to allow innovation in projects.

The current research presents narratives voiced by senior managers in permanent owner and operator organisations and temporary project organisations. The ways governance can be adjusted through the life cycle of major programmes require further a more longitudinal research investigation.

The practical benefits for the project management community is a better understanding of corporate governance in owner and operator organisations, the role of leadership and their narratives in governing processes, and the impact of strong governance on organisational performance and project deliverables.

Senior managers socially constructed the meaning of governance through narratives. The author learn about practices of governance through the perspectives of those involved in decision making.

This paper contributes to project management theory in two ways: it provides insight into the practice of corporate governance; and it develops the application of narrative enquiry to project management research.