Organizational governance and value creation: An empirical study in megaproject contexts

Megaprojects are interorganizational contexts set up by humans to develop capital-intensive, durable, and shareable technology such as transport and energy infrastructure. These enterprises enable the creation of social value by producing goods that serve as input into a wide range of economic and social activities. Extant empirical and theoretical studies have been valuable in furthering our understanding of megaprojects as an interorganizational context where organizational governance (and thus the processes and structures that enable and constrain collective action) evolves over time. However, we still know little, empirically and theoretically, as to why megaproject organizations almost invariably suffer from systematic delays, cost overruns, and scope creep. It also remains unclear how the slack resources controlled by the systems architect of a megaproject organization impact the creation and capture of social value. Further, we also know little about how megaproject organizational governance adapts to heterogeneity in the organizational's institutional environment and cross-border conflicts. By focusing on these phenomenologically-driven research questions, this doctoral thesis seeks to advance our understanding of two contemporaneous conversations in the fields of organizational theory and strategic management: theory on the relationship between organizational governance and the co-creation and distribution of value; and the contingency perspective of mirroring that establishes a relationship between organizational ties and the structure of the task network. Specifically, this three-paper thesis seeks to make three contributions. The first contribution is pre-theory and revolves around discovery of an association between megaproject organizational performance and organizational governance evolution. This phenomenological discovery has, however, important implications to theory development on how megaprojects can create social value. The second contribution exploits megaproject contexts to reveal a curvilinear relationship between an organization's slack resources and the co-creation and capture of social value with enfranchised sovereign stakeholders. And finally, the third contribution hypothesizes a contingency perspective of mirroring which posits that mirroring is actually the exception when a task network with dense technical interdependence needs to cross highly interdependent institutional and historic borders.