Empirical Study of Project Governance among Chinese Project Management Professionals

Project governance (PG) represents a direct and control function for a project based organization (PBO). Operational approaches to PG have rarely been explored and structured. Based on a face-to-face questionnaire survey of project management professionals in China, this study produces an ontology of PG “direct and control” measures at the operational level. Mean value analysis confirms positive agreement among the research data and exploratory factor analysis indicates that four control subsystems predominate: normative management control; belief system; incentive mechanism; and risk governance. Confirmatory factor analysis validates these findings. Results serve as a foundation for future development of an operationally oriented PG model.