A Social Network Theory of Stakeholders in China’s Project Governance

A project, especially for one in China, usually involves many organizations and each organization may have multiple projects. There is a clear social network relationship between these stakeholders in a project and the stakeholders’ behaviors are also subject to the structure of the social network. Based on an analysis of the social network, as a methodology that can be used to explain the relationships among project organizations, as well as an example of large-scale information system project in China, we construct in this article a way to establish the social network of governance structure, study network configurations and analyze some representative governance strategies adopted by stakeholders in China. By examining the network of project governance, we can predict the trend of the project governance structure and study the risk based on the structure.