Megaproject Organization and Performance ─ The Myth and Political Reality

Summarizing insights from a three-year study on mega-projects in the UK (namely the Crossrail and High Speed 2 railways, London Olympic Park, and the Heathrow Airport Terminal 2), this book details what form of organizing work a megaproject is and the regularities in performance based on megaprojects’ organizational structure. It argues that megaprojects are a meta-organization, a network of independent actors collaborating under an identifiable system-level goal. It conceptualizes the megaproject organization as consisting of two parts: the core members that control the strategic choices that define the project output and the development process structure, and the periphery of suppliers selected by the promoter to execute the strategy agreed upon by the core members. It considers how slippages in performance targets intrinsic to megaprojects, such as cost, schedule, and scope can be traced back to their organizational structure; the governance and performance implications of the pluralism at the core of a megaproject organization; and how the context of developing economies affects the structure-performance relationship in megaproject organization, with discussion of megaprojects like the Dedicated Freight Railway Corridor in India, the modernization of the transport network of Lagos, Nigeria, the modernization of the road network of Kampala, Uganda, and the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway in Uganda. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)