Power and Sensemaking in Megaprojects

Abstract

Megaprojects are complex achievements of organization, sensemaking, and management of power relations. Typically, engineering practice stresses rationality and linearity, exemplified in the nineteenth-century roots of modern management in writers such as Taylor and Fayol. A concern with contingency theory and the emergence of project management standards hardly changed these auspices. The emergent focus on soft systems theory and a more recent interest in the practice turn did begin to change megaproject management representations somewhat. In practice, megaprojects are occasions for much complex sensemaking, as Weick defines the concept. In turn, where there are different interests in different sensemaking, then power practices and relations need to be brought into focus. The chapter does this through discussing a number of studies in which these issues have been the focus.

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