20,862 research outputs found

    Organizational Factors and Bad News Reporting on Troubled IT Projects

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    Affect and Decision Making in Troubled Information Technology Projects

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    IT project failure is an enduring problem which has often been associated with bad news reporting and escalation of commitment. The literature in bad news reporting has focused on identifying factors (e.g., organizational climate of silence) that could influence one’s reporting decision. Similarly, the de-escalation literature has primarily investigated conditions or activities (e.g., changes in top management) which promote de-escalation. Nonetheless, what is missing in our understanding is how affect can influence bad news reporting and de-escalation decisions within IT projects. This represents a significant gap in bad news reporting and de-escalation research, as affect (i.e., mood and emotions) is recognized as a fundamental aspect of human life which strongly influences individual perceptions, judgment, and decision making. The aim of this dissertation to provide new insights regarding how affect can influence bad news reporting decisions and de-escalation of commitment within the context of troubled IT projects

    Bad News Reporting on Troubled IT Projects: The Role of Personal, Situational, and Organizational Factors

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    An individual’s bad news reporting behavior has been studied from a number of perspectives and has resulted in a variety of research streams including the MUM effect (or reluctance to transmit bad news), whistle-blowing, and organizational silence. While many scholars in different areas have studied reporting behavior, it has not been widely discussed in the information systems literature. This dissertation research addresses an individual’s bad news reporting behavior (and its antecedents) in the troubled IT project context. Many social phenomena are multi-causal (Hollander 1971). The silence phenomenon involved in an individual’s bad news reporting behavior is multi-causal too. While prior research has identified many antecedents to the bad news reporting behavior, it has not provided any systematic approach for categorizing them. In this dissertation, the antecedents are categorized into three different levels: personal factors (i.e., individual-level factors), situational factors (i.e., project-level factors), and organizational factors. This research empirically investigates how the antecedents at different levels affect (i.e., encourage or discourage) an individual’s decision to report or not report bad news in the IT project context. The dissertation follows a multi-paper model, and includes three independent, empirical studies, each with its own research model focusing on personal, situational, and organizational factors

    Overcoming the Mum Effect in IT Project Reporting: Impacts of Fault Responsibility and Time Urgency

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    The mum effect ?a project member\u27s reluctance to report bad news about a troubled project ?has been recognized as an important contributor to project failure. While there are many potential factors that can influence the mum effect, in this study we focus on two factors that are particularly important in today\u27s software development environment: (1) the issue of fault responsibility that arises in the context of outsourced IT projects that involve an external vendor, and (2) the issue of time urgency, which has become more important as firms seek to compete on Internet time, developing and delivering applications with greater speed than ever before. We draw upon the basic whistle-blowing model adapted from Dozier and Miceli (1985) to examine how fault responsibility and time urgency ultimately affect a project member\u27s IT project reporting decision. Based on the results of a controlled laboratory experiment, we confirmed that the basic whistle-blowing model holds in an IT project context and found that both fault responsibility and time urgency can have significant effects on an individual\u27s willingness to report bad news. Fault responsibility exerts both direct and indirect influence on willingness to report bad news, while time urgency was found only to exert an indirect influence on willingness to report bad news. One implication of our study is that when fault responsibility rests with an outside vendor, this can actually increase the probability that a client employee will report the bad news to his or her management, provided that the vendor is not able to hide the problem entirely from the client organization. With respect to time urgency, our results suggest that managers may be able to increase individuals\u27 willingness to report by emphasizing that there is a narrow window of time to correct defects before a project is delivered and the impacts of defects start to be felt. Contributions and directions for future research are discussed

    Withholding Bad News In Information Technonlogy Projects: The Effect Of Positive Psychology

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    Managers of IT projects (PMs) tend to gloss over the reality in their external reports including withholding bad news ( mum effect ). Reasons that have been suggested for this bias can be classified as personal-oriented and project-oriented. This paper is an initial study on the impact of positive psychology on IT project management. Prior studies have found that High Psychological Positive Capital (PsyCap) of individuals is positively correlated with their work satisfaction and higher performance. PsyCap comprises individual\u27s positive capacities of optimism, hope, resilience and efficacy. Drawing from Beck\u27s cognitive theory, we hypothesized that High PsyCap PMs, when required to report bad news to a client, are inclined to consider the project-oriented reasons rather than the personal-oriented ones. As a result, they are more willing to report bad news compared to Low PsyCap PMs. A questionnaire consisting of four cases of bad news in IT projects, together with PsyCap tests, was distributed to professional communities on the internet. Data was collected from 42 respondents. The results of the statistical analysis have shown some support for our hypotheses. The research encourages more research on PsyCap contribution to various aspects of project performance and success. Such research may also have practical implications for PM recruiting and training

    Beyond user acceptance: The determinants of the intention to produce user created contents on the internet

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    The advance in User Created Contents (UCCs) web sites like YouTube changed the role of Internet users from contents receivers to contents creators; a role which requires more pro-active user behaviour. However, the literature on user behaviour in information technology lacks theories that explain the pro-active user behaviour of producing and sharing UCCs with others on the Internet. This paper aims to reveal the major attributes of Internet users that have a positive impact on the intention to produce UCCs on the Internet. Extant related theories are reviewed to extract major factors of Internet users that lead to the production of UCCs. A questionnaire survey is administrated to 400 sampled respondents in South Korea to test the relationships among the identified factors. The results show that playfulness, self-expressiveness/sharing intention, innovativeness, computing skills and reward have a positive impact on the intention to produce UCCs. In particular, innovativeness turned out to have the biggest impact, while social participation is not a significant factor. Mediator variables such as age, gender and types of UCC also turned out to be playing a role in the causal relationships among the factors and the intention to produce UCCs. A model pertaining to the intention to produce UCCs online is developed and tested. The academic and practical implications of the study are also discussed in details

    Unpleasant Updates: Discussing Negative Project Performance with Executives

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    Project managers often have early indications that a project is performing poorly and potentially headed for failure. In such cases, reporting these warnings could prompt executives to provide essential support to mitigate and even prevent problems. However, project managers are frequently reluctant to share such information with executives. This research-in-progress aims to develop a model establishing antecedents that drive accurate status reporting between project managers and executives as well as identifying moderating variables impacting such reporting. The theory of planned behavior and information systems (IS) whistleblowing theory provide the theoretical lenses facilitating the identification of probable antecedents to such reporting intentions. A theoretical model including propositions has been developed

    The Impact Of Relationships And Confucian Ethics On Chinese Employees’ Whistle-Blowing Willingness In Software Projects

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    One of the reasons why software projects suffer from high failure rate is that employees working on the project are often reluctant to blow the whistle informing the upper-level management about the failing status of the project. In this study, we examine the impacts of organizational commitment, interpersonal closeness, and Confucian ethics on the employees’ whistle-blowing intentions in the Eastern culture context. Based on data collected from 144 Chinese MBA students, we found that the relationship with the organization and that with the wrongdoer both significantly affect the employees’ willingness to blow the whistle. With respect to the influence of Confucian ethics, we found that the employee’s ethical disposition on loyalty between sovereign and subject positively affects the whistleblowing willingness, and the employee’s ethical disposition on trust between friends positively moderates the relationship between closeness with the wrongdoer and the whistle-blowing willingness

    The Linkage Between Reporting Quality and Performance in Information Systems Projects

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    Recent research suggests that flawed status reporting is a serious concern in information systems projects. Several investigations have sought to understand the factors that lead project reporters to engage in misreporting. The main motivation for these studies has been the presumption that inaccurate reporting has a significant, negative impact on project performance. However, the linkage between reporting quality and project performance has not been empirically confirmed. The goal of this effort was to answer the following research question: Is reporting quality associated with project outcomes? Our investigation consisted of two complementary survey studies. The first study considered the perceptions of status report senders; the second study considered the perceptions of status report receivers. Both studies showed that reporting quality is positively associated with task and psychological outcomes. Moreover, the second study’s results suggest that reporting quality is also related to organizational outcomes
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