ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship between project governance and project success from an agency theory and stewardship theory perspective. The importance of project governance as a success factor in large-scale investment projects was empirically assessed in several qualitative case studies in South Africa. The majority of published research on project governance is conceptual, supplemented by some qualitative studies and very little quantitative evidence on the relationship between project governance and project success. Historically, the understanding of project success criteria has evolved from the simplistic triple constraint concept, known as the iron triangle, to something that encompasses many additional success criteria, such as quality, stakeholder satisfaction, and knowledge management. In the realm of projects, two of the three elements that constitute governance are project governance and the governance of projects. The operationalization of the paradigms was done by R. Muller and L. Lecoeuvre and allows a quantitative assessment of a project’s parent organization’s governance position.
