Governance Representations in Temporary Organization: A Case of Governance Sensemaking

Abstract

Abstract In current literature, the formal project governance often stops at the steering committee, which is usually directed by the project sponsor. Normally, Top managers act as project sponsors and play an active role until the project is approved and launched. Afterwards, the project usually gets delegated for its execution. This delegation enables middle-managers and supervisors to participate in the operationalization and the monitoring of the project strategy coming from top managers. As such, they are likely to take part in the project governance, which needs operationalization as much as the project does. Thus, they are included in the project governance zone, which reports to the steering committee. In this study, we are interested by this governance zone, and our focus is on a specific liaison device in this zone: the Project Coordination Committee, which has rarely been studied. We also explore how this governance zone gets represented by the project's participants. Our results show a surprising diversity in their representations. This allows us to identify a number of conclusions that go beyond the governance forms issues and relates to the complexity and influence of this governance zone on the disruptions between permanent and temporary governance structures within a large organization.