Knotting Integration Into Project Organization Special Purpose Vehicles

Special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are a form of project organization created for public–private partnership (PPP) projects. SPVs are complex organizational arrangements, relating actors from different institutionally regulative, normative, and cognitive contexts. We abductively analyze interviews with 36 practitioners experienced in managing SPVs using Gioia analysis. We find that SPV design is focused on systems integration, framed by transactional interpretations of contracts. This undercuts the interorganizational integration necessary for SPV design to work more effectively. We find that social and interorganizational integration remain largely overlooked, which is a key reason for PPP infrastructure project failure.