مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

In February 2014, The Guardian, The New York Times, and El Mundo all carried reports on conflicts in the Panama Canal Expansion Megaproject. The building consortium Grupo Unidos Por el Canal (GUPC) was in charge of the construction of a set of locks, often referred to as the “third set of locks” but had refused to continue the work. They were claiming an additional US $1.6 bn for problems in the construction, an amount the owner of the megaproject, the Autoridad del Canal de Panamá (ACP), refused to pay. As a consequence, the work came to a standstill, causing a further delay in completion. After weeks of public wrangling, GUPC and the ACP agreed upon large cash injections by all partners to resume construction work. This dramatic event raises questions about the governance of this prestigious megaproject.

The debate on the governance of megaprojects has emerged only recently in project management studies (Müller, 2012; Pitsis et al., 2014; Sanderson, 2012). The governance of megaprojects is designed to ensure a consistent and predictable delivery within the limitations set by a contract with external partners (Müller, 2012). In this way, governance structures are designed to ensure megaprojects run smoothly (Miller and Hobbs, 2005). Notwithstanding these strict governance regimes, the performance of megaprojects is often highly problematic (Flyvbjerg et al., 2003). For this problematic performance Sanderson (2012) identifies three possible explanations for this. The first explanation is that of “strategic rent seeking,” in which underperformance is caused by an optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation of costs by project supporters, which leads to the regular approval of non-viable projects (e.g., Flyvbjerg, 2012). The second explanation is that of governance arrangement where problems with performance are perceived to be the result of misaligned or underdeveloped governance mechanisms, with project actors being unable to provide a sufficiently flexible and robust response to inevitable turbulence in the project’s context (e.g., Miller and Hobbs, 2005; Miller and Lessard, 2000). The third explanation is a cultural one where performance problems are seen as an almost inevitable result of the organizational complexity, ambiguity, and conflict faced by project actors with diverse and competing project cultures and rationalities (e.g., Clegg et al., 2002; Van Marrewijk et al., 2008).