Governing crises and coping strategies in megaprojects

Crises and their management have always remained a subject of interest in project studies, but have not been much studied from the viewpoint of crises and their management. The importance of crises as low-probability high-impact events increases when the setting is high scale (in terms of budget and reputation), multi-organizational, complex, and temporary, such as in megaprojects. The impact of crises on megaprojects can be considerable, which could jeopardize the project and its organizations. In the worst case, they can cause reputational damage to the participating organizations, which may take a long time to recover from, and some might never enjoy the same reputation as before. This chapter will uncover different types of crises and coping strategies to manage crises in megaprojects and present a crisis management model. The crisis management model represents all possible crises and coping strategies for each type of crisis, which will enhance present theoretical and empirical insights.