Heterogeneous relationship patterns and governance strategies of project organizational networks (PONs): a colored network motif approach

Purpose This study aims to explore heterogeneous relationship patterns of the project organizational networks (PONs) and their implications for relationship governance, taking the National Quality Award Projects of China as a case study. Design/methodology/approach This study first applies a two-mode network projection method to construct the PON containing three types of project organizations (i.e. contractors, supervisors and designers) within NQAPs from 2003 to 2012. It then proposes the colored network motif approach by differing the project organizations to examine the heterogeneous relationship patterns as well as their implications for relationship governance of the PON from a micro-level perspective. Findings This study identifies 28 kinds of three-node and 202 kinds of four-node colored (anti-)motif modes, which represent various local heterogeneous relationship patterns in the real-world PON. The motif modes are adaptive relationship patterns induced by evolutionary mechanisms in the PON, and large-scale motif modes can be obtained through relationship expansion from small-scale motif modes. This has led to the two types of transformation and expansion governance strategies concerning relationship manipulation and optimization. Originality/value Traditional social network analysis research of relationship patterns of PON focuses on homogeneous relationships among the same type of project organizations based on global network measures. Essentially, the relationship is heterogeneous, which stems from different professional attributes and behavior preferences of project organizations, and micro-constitutive, which stems from the insufficient information and limited resources of project organizations. While little is known about heterogeneous yet local relationship patterns, this study is an original proposal to explore the heterogeneous relationship patterns of PONs and the associated governance mechanisms from a micro-level perspective.