Governmentality for positive project management

Project governance is the system of rules, practices, and processes by which a project is directed and controlled. Any project consists of a complex network of relations between actors, agencies, and actants. Relational governance aims at influencing networks to create innovation, reciprocity, trust, and self-organization for organizations that require collective action. Project governance including multiple firms and other agencies will have no necessary alignment between the many governance doctrines that might be involved in any specific project. The project duration might require an overall code of governance separate from those of the firms involved. It is noteworthy that there may be stakeholders to govern that are not themselves directly involved as project partners in the governance of the project. There is a need to explore alternative forms of governance to handle projects that correspond to these latter conditions. In these conditions projects must manage different stakeholders, using soft strategies of governmentality, comprising complex, albeit subtle, examples of power. Governmentality is a method with which to achieve positive project management of external but informal project stakeholders. We discuss governmentality processes that organizations can adopt to generate positive project management, such as enabling dialogue, spreading positive news of the project and creating an inclusive project culture through using digital and social media. A case study is discussed of the controversial destruction by a mining project in 2020 of Juukan Gorge, a place of significance for its indigenous traditional owners, which is located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company subsequently developed strategies to manage relations with key indigenous stakeholders to pre-empt adversarial politics.