Toward a unified theory of project governance: economic, sociological and psychological supports for relational contracting

Abstract

Large, global, cross-sectoral, multi-phased civil infrastructure projects tend to be one-off projects for which transactions have no strong ‘shadow of the future’, but where elements of relational contracting are still ubiquitous. Such projects evolve through discrete phases—financial and technical feasibility, conceptual design, detailed design, construction, operations and renovation/replacement—each phase of which can be viewed as a discrete transaction during which key participants and stakeholders rotate in and out of the project. This discontinuity of participation across phases in the project's lifecycle creates a heretofore neglected contractual hazard of ‘displaced agency’. Similar governance challenges arising from displaced agency are found in long-lived aerospace and defence programmes, large-scale software initiatives and other sectors. We review, integrate, extend and apply economic, legal, sociological and psychological governance perspectives on relational contracts to address the extreme ...