Willingness to Continue with Software Projects: Effects of Feedback Direction and Optimism under High and Low Accountability Conditions

Abstract

The willingness of managers to continue with software projects can be both beneficial and troubling. Management optimism can help bring promising projects to fruition, but can also cause valuable resources to be expended on faltering projects. This study examines three factors that can affect the willingness of managers to continue with software projects: feedback direction, feedback optimism, and accountability. Feedback direction is the objective information reflecting project prospects. Feedback optimism is the subjective mode with which the objective information has been framed. Accountability is the extent to which the manager feels responsible for project outcomes. Results of a study that manipulated these three factors showed that the effects of feedback direction and feedback optimism on willingness to continue with software projects were additive (either factor alone affected willingness to continue with software projects) when accountability was high but were interactive (both factors jointly affected willingness to continue with software projects) when accountability was low. These findings have useful implications for practice and further research.

The Binding and Blinding Influence of Project Commitment

“…Surveying individuals who are working on IT projects provides a unique perspective and fills a gap in the literature by tapping into the thoughts and beliefs of those who are closest to the project. Another reason for sampling individuals working on a project is they are likely to be the ones providing feedback (Heng, Tan, & Wei, 2003) and information that managers rely on for project status reports (Snow & Keil, 2002). They are also the workers who are most likely to detect when a project is starting to show signs of distress (Keil & Robey, 1999).…”

Unraveling equivocality in evaluation of information systems projects

“…The phenomenon occurs when decision-makers are entrapped into committing additional resources to a failing course of action; current IS/IT studies often refer to this as project escalation (Lee et al 2012;Wei et al 2003). Projects which typically exceed the initial budget and schedule are allocated additional resources thereby draining the organizational resources continuously.…”

“…These studies referred to entrapment and escalation as a phenomenon when decision-makers are entrapped in making a commitment of additional resources to a failing course of action. In recent studies, the continuation decisions for projects, on giving them additional resources and/or reducing their initial requirements, is often referred to as project escalation (Lee et al 2012;Wei et al 2003). These projects typically exceed their initial budget and schedule.…”