Identifying and Ranking Criteria of Good Governance in Project-Based Organizations

Good governance plays a key role in the growth and success of organizations and helps them to achieve their strategic goals. A review of the research literature shows that the term good governance is mostly used in relation to governments, and there is no proper understanding of the role of good governance in non-governmental organizations. Due to the significant growth of project-oriented organizations, there is a gap in the literature to explain the position of good governance in project-based organizations. For this reason, there is no good understanding of the term good governance and its application in project-based organizations. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the criteria of good governance in Iranian project-based organizations. To this end, a hybrid approach based on meta-synthesis, thematic analysis, and multi-criteria decision-making methods was used to identify and prioritize good governance criteria in project-based organizations. In the first phase, using the meta-synthesis method, an extensive review of the good governance literature from 2012 to 2020 was conducted and different criteria of good governance were extracted. In the second phase, the thematic analysis method was used to identify good governance criteria through interviews with 10 experts active in project-based organizations. In the third phase, the best-worst method (BWM) method was used to weigh and prioritize the good governance criteria. The results of data analysis indicated that accountability is the most important criterion, and the planning to respond to risks and uncertainties is the most important sub-criterion of the research. Finally, some managerial implications for managers of project-based organizations and some future research directions were provided.