Biased project status reports: A survey of IS professionals

Abstract

This paper summarizes an empirical investigation that explored biased project reporting by Information Systems (IS) professionals. The study is based on a survey of 91 professionals who were involved with system implementations in various governmental agencies. Our investigation assessed the impact of project importance, control, structure, and size on biasing behaviors. To formulate the research hypotheses for our study, we adopted a Message Exchange Perspective. The results reveal that IS professionals are more likely to bias their project status communications when working in projects that are (1) large, (2) important, and (3) lack controls. The practical and research implications of our findings are discussed