Governance Regimes for Large Complex Projects

TLDR

Governance literature often treats issues as static, yet large complex projects are dynamic, requiring regimes that adapt to context and emergent complexity, a challenge especially for organizations with limited experience. The paper proposes a framework for designing governance regimes that adapt dynamically to large complex projects, aiming to help organizations overcome the difficulty of managing such regimes. The framework draws on a re‑examination of a 60‑project study, governance literature, and interviews about the British PFI and Norwegian approval process. The proposed framework, which progressively shapes governance throughout the project life cycle, helps organizations overcome the challenge of managing governance regimes.

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for building governance regimes for large complex projects. The framework is based on three sources: 1) a re-examination of a study of 60 large capital projects (Miller & Lessard, 2000), 2) the institutional, corporate, and project governance literatures and 3) interviews centered on the revision of the British Private Finance Initiative and on the development of the Norwegian project approval process. The literature tends to treat governance issues as being static, but project development processes and environments are dynamic. The governance regimes must adapt to the specific project and context, deal with emergent complexity, and change as the project development process unfolds. Learning to manage project governance regimes is difficult for organizations that are not involved in great numbers of large complex projects. The framework based on the progressive shaping of the project through the project development life cycle is designed to help overcome this dilemma.