Projects are prone to a variety of sudden unexpected disruptions across their development cycle, requiring that effective organizations develop strategies for proactively recognizing disruption likelihood and swiftly responding to these events. We explore a hierarchy of responses to disruption and propose an “antifragile hierarchy” in which four key responses to project disruption are demonstrated (Fragile, Robust, Resilient, and Antifragile), with a range of strategies available for addressing these disruptions. Each behavior will produce different outcomes for a project, ranging from irretrievable value loss to considerable value gain. Finally, we offer a set of strategies for effectively responding to disruptions to promote antifragility in projects.

The chapter highlights the importance of stakeholders as a crucial aspect in understanding project behaviour. Effective stakeholder identification and management allows project managers to understand the needs and motivations of all individuals and groups who can impact or be impacted by a project. This information is crucial in ensuring project success by helping project managers to effectively manage stakeholder expectations and build strong relationships.

The aim of this chapter is to enable the project manager to better consider and plan stakeholder management throughout the life of the project to maximise decision-making and benefits. It will elaborate on the challenges when including different stakeholder perceptions for project performance. The assumption is that it is essential to control the project’s outcome parameters through stakeholder expectations to minimise the chances of failure and maximise performance.

Engaging stakeholders in any project environment, local regional, national or global all brings separate complexities. To deliver outcomes successfully, project managers need to develop a much clearer understanding of stakeholder perceptions, expectations and priorities to enable them to cope with any changes or uncertainty as the project evolves throughout the lifecycle.

To investigate project behaviour, and to better understand it from the perspective of a practitioner, I undertake an ethnographic study of the construction of a house in India that I was recently involved with. I find that the project evolved through three distinct phases – the teething troubles phase, the honeymoon phase and the nightmare phase – each of which displayed distinct behaviours. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis of observational data, this chapter attempts to describe the evolution of the project through these phases and their inherent internal dynamics. In doing so I provide a micro-perspective on project behaviour, suggestions on how each of these distinct phases can be managed and insights to scholars of project behaviour on how project behaviours is not only fragmented across a project’s lifecycle, but is also perhaps shaped by simultaneously occurring and entangled ‘hands’ or guiding forces. This chapter adds to the debate on whether observed project behaviour that often leads to mis-performance is the result of unwitting or malignant influences.

This chapter addresses the impact of governance on project behavior from an intra-organizational and an inter-organizational perspective. It starts by introducing governance fundamentals, like principles, approaches, standards, and paradigms, and subsequently describes the implications of these fundamentals for project behavior. Four behavior types are identified based on projects’ teleological, deontological, introvert, and extravert behavior. The inter-organizational view introduces a three-layered model for the governance of inter-organizational networks for large and megaprojects. This addresses multi-layer governance at the levels of a) network governance (i.e., for a single project), b) governance of networks (i.e., for the network of networks for several projects of a firm), and c) metagovernance (i.e., the investor’s ground rules for governance). The reader benefits from the discussion on the impact of these layers on project behavior, from understanding the impact of governance complexity on project behavior, and the practical examples given throughout the text.

Projects whose very nature requires the involvement of government experts while simultaneously engaging politicians also involve higher risks of self-inflicted vulnerability. When self-management remains insufficient and boundary spanning across multiple jurisdictions is weak or absent, the influence of political actors, who inevitably lack ‘system knowledge’ and can ‘afford not to learn’, can easily be counterproductive. This is what the case of the German Reform of money laundering prevention of 2017 illustrates. What was intended as an improvement of law enforcement resulted in administrative disaster with the consequence of tens of thousands of cases of suspected money-laundering remaining unprocessed among which thousands of cases of financing terrorism. The case analysis underlines the relevance of a common understanding of a project’s mission among the stakeholders plus a communication strategy that stimulates the spirit of a common cause. Achieving stakeholder consensus in public sector projects is particularly challenging, however, due to the potential incompatibility between the rationale of politicians seeking to secure constituency support and that of experts striving to maintain their professional identity and standing. Which implies that one fundamental challenge of public sector project management is that the will of political actors to disregard existing expert knowledge is as unpredictable as their ability to get away with it through skillful communication.

I read all the chapters, essential for engaging in an Afterword. I engaged as a sociological social theorist, long interested in power relations in organizations, who has contributed to the field of management and organization studies but currently works in a School of Project Management. I first encountered projects in the work of Alfred Schütz, as undergraduate reading in sociological theory. His phenomenological understanding of projects grounds much of my thinking about them. I conceptualized the role of contracts in projects as a form of coding that seeks to impose standing conditions on an open system in order to try and make it stable and closed. In a word, contracts work as autopoiesis. The endeavour is always in vain wherever events intrude. It is from this perspective that I review the ‘Five Hands’ debate. I regard the debate sociologically as a series of accounts. In doing this, some curious causality is revealed. From these auspices the chapter proceeds to discuss the central debate as a battlefield of ideas. It does so prior to considering each chapter in terms of the framing advanced. Finally, seven conclusions reposition project management studies, encapsulate the argument of the Afterword.

It is well recognized that the mode of governance adopted for a project can directly impact its performance. Building on previous research on project governance and performance, this chapter seeks to address governance shifts and their effects on (short-term) performance. Three types of governance are reviewed: hierarchical, network and heterarchical, along with their dynamic dimension. Relying on actor-network theory (ANT), the role of the project is explored as a powerful actant. This theoretical and methodological lens enables us to understand shifts in project governance and conceptualize potential impacts on performance, which are discussed both from a proactive and reactive perspective. Lastly, avenues for future research are suggested regarding governance shifts and their impact on performance.

Traditional project management literature often portrays heuristics as flawed shortcuts leading to errors, advocating for rational, debiasing strategies to prevent cost overruns and benefit shortfalls. This is problematic as heuristics can be effective. Building on Gigerenzer’s concept of fast-and-frugal heuristics, this study examines the use of such smart heuristics by senior managers in a large engineering consultancy firm during the early bid/no-bid decision-making phase of infrastructure projects. Employing a qualitative method from the naturalistic decision-making program, the research uncovers a decision strategy termed "thresholding." This strategy distills extensive experience and interpretation of ambiguous information into binary decisions, effectively de-selecting projects that could be potentially disastrous. The approach also gives credence to agency, as it only deselects disasters but keeps many potential alternatives in the portfolio to mature into potentially ‘good projects’. At the same time, it addresses Flyvbjerg’s call for some scrutiny at the front end of projects to avoid catastrophic projects that start on the wrong premises. Our chapter adds to the debate on the Hiding Hand by not being concerned with the “hidden”, but instead, with what can be known in the early fuzzy front-end of projects.

This chapter employs a case study approach to explore two high-profile mega-projects, chosen for their global visibility and substantial negative impacts on Brazil’s economy and society. Initially heralded as catalysts for economic prosperity and national pride, these projects were later uncovered by police investigations to be deeply rooted in corruption. Analysis of public documents reveals that corruption was embedded from the inception of these mega-projects, with decisions driven by collusive, deliberate, and criminal intentions rather than mere ignorance. Empirical research on corruption and collusion in project management is scarce due to the clandestine nature of these activities and the challenges in data collection. Existing studies frequently rely on conceptual analyses rather than empirical evidence. The chapter introduces the concept of ‘mega-projects for mega-corruption’ to illustrate the extensive immorality involved and the role of the Malevolent Hand in facilitating corruption through strategic misrepresentation. By examining two cases involving oil refineries and soccer stadiums, the chapter underscores the necessity of robust mechanisms to combat corruption in project management. It aims to enhance practitioners’ awareness and emphasizes the need for empirical research and effective policies, such as establishing independent advisory bodies and implementing whistleblowing policies, to ensure accountability and protect public interests.