Supervisors: Per Svejvig & Mona Toft Madsen
Discussants: Irene Pollach & Carsten Bergenholtz

Abstract
Although the importance of project governance has been acknowledged during the past few decades, there is still limited research on the actuality of project governance in the implementation phase of major projects. Through a longitudinal qualitative case study based on multiple kinds of data collection approaches, namely non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis, this study aims to shed light on which governance practices exist and emerge in a major infrastructure project in Europe.

The findings illustrate how stakeholders with seemingly different visions discover opportunities for collaboration and how processes that at first sight are a waste of resources to some of the project participants can be considered as quality assurance procedures.

The contribution of this study is two-fold. First, theoretically, it contributes to the current debate regarding the governance of major projects and, more specifically, the governance of the inner life of major projects from a practice perspective. Second, empirically the findings may inspire practitioners to reflect upon their practices. Furthermore, the results provide practice-based knowledge, which ultimately creates awareness among responsible institutions about the actuality of such projects, which may be used to reflect upon and thereby consider new improvement measures.

Everyone is welcome!