A Study On Institutional Management In International Infrastructure Projects Under Tight Schedules

With the continuous development of the international engineering market, moreand more international infrastructure projects are initiated or undertaken by Chineseenterprises.Under the condition of increasingly complex external environment(institutional environment) and tight schedule, how to ensure the project’s successbecomes a greatchallenge for international infrastructure project management.Scholars have found the importance of institutional environment for internationalinfrastructure projects. They mainly have discussed the impacts of institutionalenvironment on project organization, but have an unclear description of how tomanage these impacts and have little discussion of institutional management.So thereis still no good answer on "How to manage the institutional environment of project".Based on an in-depth case study of an actual international large infrastructure project,the definitions of technical management and institutional management, this thesis notonly made a classification of project management activities, conducted an in-depthanalysis of technical management and the content of institutional management, butalso illustrated the interaction between institutional management and technicalmanagement.There are four main contributions in this thesis. Firstly, this thesis found thatinstitutional management is throughout the entire process of internationalinfrastructure project, and plays an important role at different stages of project lifecycle. Secondly, when emergencies happened because of the changes of institutionalenvironment of international infrastructure projects, the project participants had betterhandle these changes of external environment in dealing with these emergencies. Butsome solutions should firstly meet demands of institutional environment, and have tobe legitimacy. Yet sometimes project participants even have to sacrifice some requestsof technical management. Thirdly, institutional management of internationalinfrastructure projects means that the project system should adaptto existinginstitutional environment and create or change institutional environment in order tomake for the project better. Finally, there is a positive relationship between technicalmanagement and institutional management in international infrastructure projectswhich represents that through better managing‘the project of institutionalenvironment, the project participants gain legitimacy for the implementation ofprojects and provide more support to ensure efficiency of technical management.Through a case study of international infrastructure projects, this thesis has acomprehensive and profound understanding of institutional management ofinternational infrastructure projects, as well as the interaction between institutionalmanagement and technical management, thereby contributes to theoretical research ofinstitutional management in the international infrastructure project management field.