The business approach of large projects: The contribution of neo-institutional theories

Large Infrastructure Projects' stakes are major in terms of economics. Their governance has evolved over the past years, with formal Call for Tenders becoming a classic way to select suppliers, within a more competitive and institutionally complex environment. Current theoretical methodologies, structuring marketing & sales action, appear somewhat inappropriate to tackle this evolution: they neither really take into account the consequences of the very formal Call for Tenders, nor the institutional systemic complexity involved in such Large Projects; besides, Sales & Marketing suffer from a basic lack of legitimacy compared to Project Management and Purchasing, which carries on the powerful myth of Competition. Calling in New Organizational Institutionalism theories provides a new approach, allowing to consider such a Large Project as a complex, unique and dynamic institutional system, which institutionalizes itself progressively (a concept that differs from the so called milieu) Such an approach allows to define a new analysis methodology to asses interactions among all actors involved into the project, and to propose key principles for innovative proactive Sales & Marketing actions towards such complex institutional systems. This PhD research work develops a constructivist methodology based on interviews with key actors and in-depth analysis of two case studies in telecommunications and air traffic control infrastructure. The author proposes actual, theoretical and practical, areas for improvement of the Sales & Marketing methodology, allowing industrial corporations to institutionalize their competitive advantages. Ultimately, this research work leads to a new Sales approach, based on a theoretical framework, incorporating modern Sociology inputs into current Sales & Marketing theories: a New Institutional Marketing.
Keywords: Organizational Institutionalism, Neo-institutionalism, Large Projects, Sales & Marketing, Infrastructure, New Institutional Marketing