ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ways projects and their management are embedded within the structures of their parent organization and are synchronized with its corporate governance. Projects do not exist in a vacuum. Projects need to be linked to their parent organizations in a way that allows projects to be successful while respecting the practices and limitations set by corporate governance, for example through its policies, processes, roles and responsibilities. Project management starts at the top of the organization, where its business is defined, the need for new projects to develop products, services or organizational structures is created, as well as the need for projects to expand, contract or change the business. It is at the top of the organization where the process or project-orientation of the organization is determined, thus whether or not projects are a building block of an organization’s business. It is also here where the raison d’être of the organization is decided: what the organization’s reason for being is and its role in the market, industry or public sector; how it conducts its business and for whom; how legitimacy and transparency of practices is provided to owners, directors, shareholders or other stakeholders in line with legal and moral requirements. These decisions determine the type of governance for the corporation. It provides a framework for managers to take decisions in day-to-day work, but does not determine these decisions. Through that corporate governance creates the ‘conditions for ordered rule and collective action’ (Stoker, 1998) (p. 155) and shapes the ‘conduct of conduct’ in organizations by use of subtle forces in a self-regulating approach (Lemke, 2001).
