Governance of projects and its implementation principles in coopetitive settings: a literature review

This systematic literature review investigates the governance of projects in inter-organizational coopetitive settings. The analysis of 141 articles, with an accumulated empirical base of over 80,000 datapoints, derived a governance model with elements for inter-organizational strategy, governance integration, management of tensions and outcomes, plus their specific governance dimensions. The findings show the importance of multi-level governance for the identification and handling of coopetitive paradoxes to reduce psychological stress for individuals in tasks and organizations. Moreover, a further accumulation of the material led to the development of 24 first-order and eleven second-order principles for the implementation of the governance model in organizations. The principles were assessed against those of practice standards for portfolio governance, to identify the particularities of governance in coopetitive settings.