Managerial agency (re)producing project governance structure and context: Public-private partnerships in the Netherlands

Project managers activate their agentic powers in the (re)production of project governance structure and the institutional context of projects. By examining three ongoing Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects within the Dutch policy path, we provide evidence that managers aim to improve their working conditions when enacting three project...

Unravelling governmentality in project ecologies

Under the rubric of project governance, governmentality has been defined as a general mode of governing people in projects, whether these projects are organized in an authoritarian, liberal, or neo-liberal mode in their approach to authority relations. We argue that governmentality is a specifically neo-liberal form of social integration, one...

Foucault’s governmentality and the issue of project collaboration

The concept of governmentality has proven useful to analyse how the reflexive management of people within and without the project is conducted. In this chapter we explore the organizational theory of governmentality and its importance in project settings. First, we identify the specificity of project governance and relate it to the definition...

Understanding the internal commissioning role: An explorative study on public managers in Dutch public sector organisations in their role as internal commissioner involved in the realisation phase of infrastructure projects

Previous research assessing public organisations in the delivery of infrastructure projects mainly focuses on public project delivery organisations and their interaction with private parties. However, many challenges experienced by these project delivery organisations relate to the interaction with the public parent organisation. In practice,...

Translating the invisible: Governing underground utilities in the Amsterdam airport Schiphol terminal project

Governing material conditions—including physical, material subjects such as machines, build constructions, construction materials, and subsoils—is a crucial challenge within projects and is underrepresented in project governance theory. To clarify the relationship between project governance and materiality, we draw on translation theory,...

Governing construction projects in which 3D printing is applied: An integration of traditional project governance, product design and innovation

3D Printing is an emerging manufacturing technology that is in a research and prototyping stage in the construction industry. This research presents a governance framework for construction projects in which large scale freeform 3D printing is applied, based on empirical data of 7 case studies. The observed governance in the case studies is a...