Revisiting the Relationships between Governance Mechanisms and Project Performance: Meta-Analysis of Main and Moderating Effects

The findings of previous extensive explorations of the associations between two primary governance mechanisms—trust and contractual governance—and project performance in various domains within project management, including the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector, are considerably varied and occasionally contradictory. To gain more precise insights, this study used a meta-analysis to systematically integrate the impacts of governance mechanisms on project performance and examine the moderating effects of contextual (i.e., project type and national culture dimension) and methodological (i.e., measurement method and response rate) factors. It used data from 62 studies involving 14,169 samples. Main-effect results demonstrated that trust exerted a stronger positive effect on project performance than contractual governance. Moderation analyses showed that the impact of trust on project performance was stronger in collectivist cultures and samples with a high response rate; the contractual governance–project performance relationship was stronger in a high uncertainty-avoidance culture and when contractual governance was measured as a second-order construct. Surprisingly, the effectiveness of these two governance mechanisms was not moderated by project type. This study is a pioneering meta-analytic investigation focusing on governance mechanisms–project performance relationships while considering the moderating roles of contextual and methodological factors. It contributes significantly to the AEC project governance literature by reconciling previous inconsistencies in findings. Its results will guide both AEC and non-AEC project owners in selecting more-effective governance mechanisms by considering the cultural background of different contractors and in designing well-structured contracts to enhance project effectiveness.