The roles of mood and conscientiousness in reporting of self‐committed errors on IT projects

Abstract

Over the past two decades, several studies have investigated the factors that lead to and away from individuals' reporting of truthful status information on IT projects. These studies have typically considered the reporting decisions of an individual who is aware of negative status information that is attributed to others' errors. These previous studies have seldom examined the situation in which the individual is considering whether to report information about his or her own self-committed error on the project. In this study, we consider this largely unexamined phenomenon. In this context, we focus on the influences that different affective states and a personality trait (conscientiousness) can have on error reporting decisions. Specifically, we investigate how different moods (i.e. positive vs. negative) and conscientiousness can influence error reporting decisions in the context of an IT project. Based on the results from a controlled laboratory experiment, we find that individuals in a negative mood are more willing to report their errors compared to individuals in a positive mood. Conscientiousness also positively influences individuals' willingness to report errors, and it also has an indirect effect through cost-benefit differential (i.e. one's perceptions of benefits relative to costs). Additionally, mood is found to moderate the relationship between conscientiousness and willingness to report. We discuss the implication of our findings and directions for future research and for practice.

Cognitive‐affective drivers of employees' daily compliance with information security policies: A multilevel, longitudinal study

“…Although there has been empirical support for the simultaneous, direct influences of affective and cognitive processes on judgement and decision-making in both IS (Anderson & Agarwal, 2011;Lee, Keil, Smith, & Sarkar, 2017;Lowry, Twyman, et al, 2014) and non-IS contexts (Pham et al, 2001), many theory-driven studies of the direct influence of affect have omitted cognitive factors. This is also true for RCT-based ISP compliance research, wherein no studies have investigated the direct influences of affective and cognitive processes, as our review in Appendix S1…”

“…Certainly, moods can be influenced by workplace interactions and events that occur throughout the day, but moods are generally detached from specific causes or referents (Loiacono & Djamasbi, 2010). In this vein, research has conceptualised moods as exogenous factors that predict job attitudes and decision-making in both IS and non-IS contexts (Lee et al, 2017;Loiacono & Djamasbi, 2010).…”

Editorial: Why are you submitting to the ISJ?

“…In the second paper, Hyung Koo Lee, Mark Keil, H. Jeff Smith, and Sumantra Sarkar (Lee et al, ) investigate error reporting on IT projects, specifically situations in which individuals consider whether or not to report a self‐committed error on the project. Contrary to the assumption of rational behaviour by decision makers, this study focuses on how affective states (positive/negative moods) and a personality trait (conscientiousness) can influence error reporting on IT projects.…”