دانلود رایگان مقاله شیوه فرهنگی حکمزانی در مگا پروژه توسعه کانال پاناما

Abstract

The academic debate on governance in project management is dominated by research that looks at the structure of governance regimes, but there is very little research on the micro-practices of governance as it actually takes place. This paper fills this gap by focusing on the governance practices of project employees and looking at megaprojects as cultural phenomena. Therefore, a one-year ethnographic field study of the Panama Canal Expansion Megaproject was conducted to examine the cultural practices of governing. In the study, five cultural practices were found to influence the governance of this megaproject: (1) ritualizing the bid-winning ceremony, (2) changing teams, (3) struggling over governance structure, and labeling according to (4) national and (5) organizational cultures. This paper makes a contribution to the current debate by offering a cultural approach of megaprojects and by including a case that shows how ex post micro-processes of governing can start escalation in megaprojects.

5. Discussion

When analyzing the research findings through a cultural lens, we have distinguished different practices of ex post governing in the PCEM. To begin with, we understood the public announcement of the bid winner as a transitional ritual. In this ritual, the ACP expressed certain values through the use of symbols, which were meaningful to both the ACP and the GUPC team: transparency (glass box) and confidentiality (National Bank, closed envelopes). Transition rituals have proven to be important in the progress of a project (Van den Ende and Van Marrewijk, 2014), and based on our findings, we suggest that the ACP’s public announcement of the bid winner ceremony can be understood as a cultural practice of governing. This ritual marks an important transition point, namely, the mutual commitment of client (ACP) and agent (GUPC) to execute the project. The ACP used the ritual to achieve the full commitment of the GUPC consortium to execute the megaproject for the agreed-upon very competitive price.