The transformative effect of top management governance choices on project team identity and relationship with the organization — An agency and stewardship approach

•We examine transformative effects of top management intervention on project team.•Failure, CEO and governance changes, and perception of betrayal act as triggers.•Project team identity changes from collectivistic to individualistic.•Project team relationship with the organization changes from stewardship to agency.•Project team identity and relationships are transitory and depend on contingencies.

This study focuses on the relationship and identity changes within and between a project team and its organization following top management intervention in the context of a large international construction project. The study follows the project-as-practice orientation, examining the actions and behaviors of the project team through participant ethnography in the “praxis” of the project site over its entire duration. The longitudinal case allows the examination of the way the transition process established a new governance culture undermining the initial trust-based one and changed it from a virtual absence of mechanisms toward far more potent mechanisms of control, monitoring, and punishment. Simultaneously, the initial stewardship relationships and collectivist identity of the project team shifted toward agency relationships and individualistic identity. The triggers for the transformation process were identified as CEO succession, project failure, top management intervention driven changes in governance mechanisms, and perception of organizational betrayal of the project team.