Mirza Rizwan Sajid

Project governance and stakeholder management have been acknowledged as substantial areas of organizational concern for the successful delivery of projects. However, its full functions are yet to be explored for the performance of government-sponsored infrastructure projects due to the inherent complexities and uncertainties that arise from their unique socioeconomic perspective in developing countries. Therefore, this research investigates the dimensions of project governance (i.e., portfolio direction; sponsorship effectiveness and efficiency; and disclosure and reporting) effects on project performance through the correlation of stakeholder management. Based on the stakeholder theory, a moderation model was proposed and a survey questionnaire was designed to get feedback from the respondents of the government policy and planning departments of Pakistan. Structural equation modeling was the core statistical technique for testing the hypotheses. The findings of moderation analysis show that project governance has a positive relation with project performance at medium and higher regression coefficients values of stakeholder management. Inversely, at low regression values, this relationship is negative and insignificant. This research contributes to the literature as the significant interaction of stakeholder management could amplify the effect of project governance, subsequently enhancing the performance of public infrastructure projects.

The governance of public sector infrastructure projects became an important topic of interest in the project, program, and portfolio management literature during the last decade. Today, it is becoming a central focus for policymakers seeking to ensure success in selecting, designing, and implementing government-sponsored programs of multi-projects. Due to the multiple underlying risks and complexities, the governance of infrastructure programs constitutes a critical element in strategic planning in developing countries. This paper has analyzed the infrastructure development program in Gilgit-Baltistan (Northern Pakistan), and revealed major shortcomings in the areas of decision-making, stakeholder management, and role ambiguity. Approaches to remedy these shortcomings have, thus, been proposed.

Sustainable development is the core agenda item of the 21st century to be addressed simultaneously by societies, businesses, and academia. Likewise, sustainability research in the project context is fragmented and still at a nascent stage with less attention directed towards the key antecedents particularly in developing countries. Using institutional theory, this paper analyzes the role of normative and mimetic isomorphic pressures as external enablers for integrating sustainability in project processes. Additionally, it aims to empirically validate a structural model for predictors of sustainable project management (SPM). Data were collected from 146 large construction firms in Pakistan which were then analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. The results show that mimetic isomorphic pressures assert more influence than normative pressures in predicting the sustainability performance of construction projects. The inferred implications suggest that large construction firms will tend to improve their sustainable performance under isomorphic pressure from professional bodies and from those competitors who are early adopters of sustainable project practices. This paper contributes to the literature by explaining the role of non-coercive isomorphism as an important enabler of SPM in developing countries. The model presented will enrich our current understanding of SPM by studying its juxtaposition with institutional theory and sustainable development research.

This paper explores the investigation of a Volterra-Fredholm integro-differential equation that incorporates Caputo fractional derivatives and adheres to specific order conditions. The study rigorously establishes both the existence and uniqueness of analytical solutions by applying the Banach principle. Additionally, it presents a unique outcome regarding the existence of at least one solution, supported by exacting conditions derived from the Krasnoselskii fixed point theorem. Furthermore, the paper encompasses neutral Volterra-Fredholm integro-differential equations, thus extending the applicability of the findings. Additionally, the paper explores the concept of Ulam stability for the obtained solutions, providing valuable insights into their long-term behavior. To emphasis the practical significance and reliability of the results, an illustrative example is included, effectively demonstrating the applicability of the theoretical discoveries.