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

The mum effect - a project member's 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, two factors are focused that are particularly important in today's 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. The basic whistle-blowing model adapted from Dozier and Miceli (1985) are drawn to examine how fault responsibility and time urgency ultimately affect a project member's IT project reporting decision. Based on the results of a controlled laboratory experiment, the basic whistle-blowing model holds in an IT project context and both fault responsibility and time urgency can have significant effects on an individual's willingness to report bad news.