Escaping the Governance Trap: Insights from New Infrastructure Development “Megaprojects”

Summary Mega infrastructure projects in liberal democracies often encounter significant cost overruns and delays. These challenges arise from tensions between mandated stakeholder engagement and shareholder-focused decision making. Legal frameworks require broad stakeholder involvement, yet investors prioritize cost efficiency, frequently omitting collaboration expenses from initial budgets. This misalignment creates governance traps, leading to prolonged negotiations, inefficiencies, collective action problems, and diminished trust among managers, stakeholders, and investors. This special section of California Management Review examines the dynamics of large-scale stakeholder enfranchisement. This introduction presents a 2 × 2 framework categorizing megaproject governance based on legal mandates for stakeholder inclusion and the degree of shareholder-centric investment decisions. The featured articles propose strategies to enhance stakeholder collaboration and address governance challenges. Together, they suggest that large-scale stakeholder engagement can be effective when organizations enjoy ample resources or strong cooperative norms. In their absence, governance traps may emerge, hindering efficiency and broad-based wealth creation. Alternative social arrangements can be employed to navigate and escape these governance traps.