Interorganizational Governance in Projects: Contracts and collaboration as alignment mechanism

This is a hybrid defence. Click HERE to view the livestream.

This dissertation studies various aspects of interorganizational governance in projects, using example of construction projects in particular and focusing on how contracts and collaboration can effectively align diverging interests of multiple parties. The first empirical study investigates how clients (buyers) can design effective multi-party performance-based contracts to align interests of contractor and subcontractors on the project outcome. The second empirical project studies  how organizations can learn to contract, or revise their contracts during an ongoing project to maintain their role of effective alignment mechanisms. The third study shifts focus to the relational governance and explores the interplay between managerial and behavioural sides of project collaboration. This dissertation is one of the few examples of the purchasing and supply management research in the complex construction projects. It brings not only valuable theoretical and practical insights on this phenomenon, but hopefully also demonstrates the potential and the need for more investigations of project settings in this scientific discipline. This work also offers advice to practitioners about the adoption and design of multi-party PBCs, effective approach to contract revisions within ongoing projects, as well as the design and implementation of collaborative strategies.