Exploring the emergence of lock-in in large-scale projects: A process view

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the emergence of lock-in in large-scale projects. Although large-scale projects have been studied for decades, most studies have applied economic or psychological perspectives to emphasize decision-making processes at the project front-end. Of those studies, some have focused on poor decision-making due to lock-in and the escalating commitments of decision-makers to ineffective courses of action. However, little is known about the way that project decisions are affected by organizational and inter-organizational contexts and the actors involved. Understanding decisions from a process viewpoint with a long-term (inter-) organizational perspective will lead to a better understanding of lock-in and the overall performance of large-scale projects. This qualitative research is based on a case study. The research setting is the multi-actor Madrid–Barcelona High-Speed rail Line (HSL) project in Spain. Through observations, interviews, several project documents, and report analysis, we explore the processual nature of the choices made during the course of the project. We consider the contextual conditions that give rise or support the emergence of lock-in in relation to pre- and post-project effects, institutional influences, and management practices that create action spaces at the project level. Our findings suggest that lock-in emergence requires the recognition of the long-term (inter-) organizational perspective regarding mechanisms and effects rather than confining decisions to the individual or single actor control in the front-end of projects. Based on organizational theory, the main contribution of this paper is to enrich our understanding of the emergence of lock-in using process theories.