Project Governance: Reflections on the Past

and Suggestions for the Future

Special Issue

COMMENTARY

By Prof Shankar Sankaran, PhD

Sydney, Australia

The recent special issue published in the Project Management Journal honours the work of Emeritus Professor Ralf Müller who served as an Editor-in-Chief of the journal and has contributed significantly to the advancement of project governance research and practice since 2009.

The special issue has several interesting contributions from prominent project management researchers who have worked with Ralf.

Jeffrey Pinto, Kate Davis and Neil Turner raise an interesting question on the role of governance when unexpected events like the replacement of a project manager upsets the project mid-stream.

Linzhuo Wang and coauthors Xinnan Wang and Xuemei Liu discuss the challenges faced in governing interorganizational project networks.  Ata Ul Musawir provides a new perspective the principal agent framework on project governance. Both papers contribute to the discussion on the governance of interorganizational projects and the evolving interest in network governance that Ralf has been publishing about.

Gro Holst Volden and Ole Jonny Klakegg discuss learning opportunities from the governance of public projects in Norway from an organizational learning perspective since the Norwegian governance framework was introduced in 2000. Maude Brunet and Olivier Choinière trace the evolution of governance of public projects in Canada and identify five transitions that have taken place over four decades. Both these papers contribute to the political studies aspect of project governance which may be of interest to the PM World readers who are aware of the evolution of project governance in other parts of the world.

Another interesting paper by Hans Georg Gemünden, Susanne Mertens, Harald Krehl, Karl-Heinz Wolf and Alexander Kock looks at a retrospective view of the business performance of Berlin Airport using publicly available financial data uncovering poor governance and decision making by stakeholders. This provides a different view of public governance on one project that has caught the attention of project management researchers and practitioners.

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How to cite this article: Sankaran, S. (2025). Special Edition: Project Governance: Reflections on the Past and Suggestions for the Future, commentary, PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue IV, April.  Available online at http://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/pmwj151-Apr2025-Sankaran-Commentary-on-Project-Shankar-Governance-special-edition.pdf

About the Author

Shankar Sankaran, PhD

Sydney, Australia

Shankar Sankaran, PhD is Professor of Organisational Project Management at the School of the Built Environment, University of Technology Sydney and an Associate Member of the UTS Robotics Institute located at the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia. He is an Associate Editor of Project Management Journal and has guest edited special issues for that journal.

He is a Chief Investigator of an Australian Research Council Industry Transformation Research Hub for Human Robot-Team for Sustainable Resilient Construction being set up at UTS.

Shankar was Chair of the Global Accreditation Centre board for the Project Management Institute (2021-2022), a Member of the College of Leadership and Management at Engineers Australia – Sydney Division since 2021, and the Past President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (2019-2020). He is one of the members of a team of project management professionals working on Engineers Australia’s initiative on Project Governance by Engineers that started in 2022.

Shankar holds a PhD, Business and Management, from the University of South Australia; Master of Engineering, Systems Engineering, from RMIT, Australia; Bachelor of Science (Hon), Instrument Technology, from Madras University, India. He is PMP certified by PMI and a Chartered Professional Engineer in Australia.

Learn more about Prof. Sankaran at https://pmworldlibrary.net/shankar-sankaran-phd/