Bridging Public and Private Interests in Megaprojects: Practical and Theoretical Implications

Megaprojects are no longer exceptional undertakings located at the margins of organisational and policy practice. Across domains such as infrastructure, digital connectivity, sustainability transitions, and scientific development, they have become routine instruments through which public authorities pursue strategic objectives in partnership with private actors. Governments increasingly rely on megaprojects to mobilise capi-tal, coordinate heterogeneous stakeholders, and accelerate large-scale socio-economic transformation. Yet this growing reliance on public–private collaboration in megapro-ject delivery continues to coexist with a persistent pattern of underperformance: cost overruns, delays, contested legitimacy, and fragile or ambiguous public value creation remain the norm rather than the exception. This volume starts from a deliberately critical premise that speaks directly to the challenge of bridging public and private interests. Many of the recurrent pathologies of megaprojects cannot be satisfactorily explained by technical uncertainty, scale effects, or bounded rationality alone. While these factors are undeniably relevant, they tend to obscure a more fundamental governance problem. Megaprojects are hybrid socio-technical and institutional systems, designed to pursue public goals through private participation. As such, they are inherently shaped by the coexistence—and frequent collision—of divergent institutional logics concerning accountability, performance metrics, risk allocation, time horizons, and value creation. Misalignment between public and private logics is therefore not a contingent managerial failure, but a structural condition embedded in the very architecture of megaproject governance. The contributions collected in this volume address this challenge by conceptualising megaprojects as temporary yet highly consequential governance systems at the interface between public and private domains. From this perspective, project outcomes emerge from the interaction between organisational arrangements, stakeholder configurations, regulatory and contractual frameworks, and technological infrastructures through which public and private interests are negotiated, translated, and stabilised over time. This shift in focus moves beyond narrow assessments of delivery performance and directs attention to the mechanisms through which alignment, compromise, and mutual accountability are—or are not—achieved. By bringing together theoretical advances and empirically grounded analyses, the volume advances a governance-centred understanding of megaprojects that speaks to both scholars and practitioners. It reframes megaproject performance and legacy as emergent properties of public–private governance configurations, highlighting the con-ditions under which collaboration can generate shared value, as well as those under which it produces persistent tensions and societal costs. In doing so, the volume contributes to the broader debate on how public and private interests can be more effectively bridged in megaprojects, offering insights with clear practical and theoretical implications. Several contributions address the organisational and managerial assumptions that underpin dominant megaproject governance models. In Holacracy and Project Manage-ment: Are Flat Organizations the New Normal for Project Managers?, Araya Aliaga, Mariani, and Mancini challenge hierarchical authority as the default response to complexity, examining whether flatter organisational arrangements can better support distributed decision-making in megaproject contexts. This line of inquiry is extended in Systemic Bottom-Up Approach to Project Management for a Sustainable Project Governance by Iovino, Franco, Armenia, Di Nauta, and Pompei, which reconceptualises sustainability as an emergent property of governance configurations rather than as a compliance requirement imposed exogenously. A complementary temporal and systemic lens is introduced in Designing Transitions through Projects: The Project Transition Canvas as a Tool for Systemic Change by Mariani, Araya Aliaga, Atencio, and Mancini, which positions projects as mechanisms for steering long-term socio-technical transitions. At the portfolio level, Generation of Project Portfolio Benefits: Linking Activities to Particularized Benefits by Sun, Mariani, Bai, and Mancini provides a process-based explanation of how collective value is generated through specific managerial activities, thereby grounding abstract notions of public and strategic value in observable governance practices. A second cluster of contributions systematically engages with the relational and legitimacy dimensions of megaproject governance. Stakeholder Relationship Dynamics in Megaprojects: A Conceptual Framework Based on Project Management Focus Areas by Arcuri, Cantoni, and Di Nauta advances a dynamic view of stakeholder relationships as governance mechanisms that evolve in response to shifting priorities and control structures. This relational perspective is deepened in Bridging Public and Private Interests through Social Impact in Megaprojects by Cellerino, Rokio, Jungwirth, and Mancini, which theorises social impact as an intentional governance lever capable of mediating between collective objectives and private incentives. The role of information, symbol-ism, and disclosure in legitimacy construction is critically examined in Sustainability Disclosure, Stakeholders, and Legacy in Olympic Games: A Preliminary Comparative Assessment of Milano Cortina 2026 and Torino 2006 by Caccialanza, De Nito, and Canonico, while Public–Private Partnerships in the Logistics Sector: Reflections from a Local Case Study by Barabaschi and Rizzi grounds these dynamics in an empirically rich analysis of territorially embedded hybrid governance arrangements. Beyond organisational and relational aspects, the volume explicitly addresses the institutional infrastructures that pre-structure megaproject governance. In Bridging Environmental Protection and Profit Corporate Interests in Megaprojects: Any Changes Following the EU Directive 2024/1760?, Zecchin analyses how evolving European envi-ronmental regulation redefines the allocation of responsibility between public authorities and private actors, challenging established assumptions about risk externalisation. Fiscal governance is examined in Current and Prospective Tax Measures to Attract Megaprojects to Italy by Purpura, which highlights how tax regimes and cooperative compliance mechanisms function as critical enabling conditions for private participation in public megaprojects. A multilevel institutional perspective is offered in The Mega-Project of Science as Multilevel Governance: The Case of the Implementation of the ItalianCareer Regulations (ASN) by Marini and Minelli, where science policy itself is analysed as a megaproject, revealing how shared governance arrangements can undermine effectiveness despite formal accountability mechanisms. Finally, several contributions foreground the growing role of digital technologies as governance mediators. Ultra-Broadband Megaprojects: The Experience of Italian Dig-ital Infrastructure Projects and the Potential of Project Management Techniques as a Methodology for Minimizing Project Risks by Micozzi and Montefusco examines digital infrastructure megaprojects as socio-technical systems embedded in public policy objec-tives and market dynamics. At a more granular level, AI-Enabled Contractual Knowl-edge and Risk Governance in EPC Projects: A Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda by Malatesta and Mancini shows how artificial intelligence reshapes knowledge distribution, risk visibility, and decision-making authority between public clients and private contractors, raising new challenges for transparency and accountability. Taken together, the thirteen contributions advance a coherent and deliberately challenging proposition: the central problem of megaprojects is not how to optimise delivery under conditions of complexity, but how to design governance systems capable of man-aging institutional hybridity. By integrating organisational, relational, institutional, and technological perspectives, this volume shifts the analytical focus from performance outcomes to governance architectures and offers a robust foundation for future research on the design and evolution of large-scale socio-technical governance systems.