Transforming construction: heterarchical megaproject ecologies and the management of innovation

Abstract

As the digital transformation impacts many sectors of the economy, actors in the construction industry—and more specifically in megaproject initiatives—have to adapt to new technologies and processes. Megaprojects are commonly undertaken to build essential infrastructures such as roads, dams, buildings, or even smart cities or districts, and usually involve complex and hybrid organizational forms. Moreover, digitalization transforms megaprojects, presenting megaproject teams with opportunities, but also challenges. This conceptual paper explores the characteristics of heterarchical megaproject ecologies in order to identify ways to address the impacts of the current digital transformation. Our aim is to analyze how a heterarchical form of governance contributes to transforming the management of innovation. While heterarchies can lead to severe dysfunctions, we propose strategies to manage them, paying specific attention to the governance of a common-pool-resource scenario, network roles, knowledge articulation and learning. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a renewed conceptualization of megaproject governance and to propose a conceptual framework that can be used to study the management of innovation in empirical megaproject settings.

Keywords:

• Megaproject ecologies
• megaproject governance
• management of innovation
• digitalisation
• heterarchy

Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2018 conference of the International Association of Strategic Management and the 7th International Megaprojects Workshop in 2019. The authors want to thank Alireza Ahmadsimab for comments on previous versions of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

A grant has been received for this research from Fonds de recherche Société et culture, Québec (2020-NP-266212).