What is project governance and what are its origins?

• We explore how project governance has been discussed in literature.
• We identify two distinct streams of project governance literature.
• We discuss the origins of project governance literature.
• We link project governance literature to general governance literature.

Although there is an ever-increasing discussion on governance in recent project research, the concept of project governance and its main origins remains ambiguous. In this paper, we examine project governance literature and contrast it to general governance literature published outside the domain of project research. Our analysis revealed the existence of two distinct and relatively independent streams of research. One of these streams addresses project governance as a phenomenon external to any specific project, while the other views project governance as internal to a specific project. Our results further indicate that while project governance literature bases most of its argumentation on established project research it also, to a significant extent, draws from the transaction cost economics literature. Based on our findings, we argue that there exists considerable potential for bridging project governance literature and general governance literature further.