Why do Local Governments and External State-owned Enterprises Fall into the Project Cooperation Dilemma?—Process Tracking Based on the Delayed Opening of Hongdao Station

Abstract

: Project cooperation between local governments and external state-owned enterprises is a practical choice that is often agreed upon based on strategic attributes and owing to the high costs of high-speed railways. However, due to the potential conflict of different management modes, both parties may fall into a cooperation dilemma. To explore the mechanisms that generate this dilemma, this study takes the delayed opening of the Hongdao high-speed railway station as an example and builds an analysis framework based on the embeddedness perspective using process tracking and in-depth interviews. The study finds that the pressure transmission of external state-owned enterprises and the pressure perception of local governments under political embeddedness lead to the imbalance of cooperative relations. Furthermore, subjective and objective constraints under the embeddedness of local government governance weaken parallel supervision. In embedded cooperation, form embedding and action decoupling create an attention vacuum. Under the influence of multiple mechanisms, the cooperation dilemma is finally formed. This study enriches the understanding of the topology of government-business relations, identifies the potential tension between localized management and project management, and supports the forward-looking governance of the cooperation dilemma in project practice.