How Bias Impacted the Project Manager Decision to Not Terminate a Failing Project

Abstract

Almost half of projects have failed globally during the last 50 years yet most studies in the literature review were inclusive. The research design was a robust repeated measures controlled experiment where the 16 participants received all treatments, which may be contrasted to a similar 4 x 4 factorial experiment with a control group (common in psychology or healthcare) resulting in a group size of only 4. All but the individual project manager (PM) factors were controlled, while primary demographic and behavior data were collected. PM’s were tested for competence using a risk management scenario, and given two manipulated conditions (a basic and a biased treatment). Since the organizational and project level factors were controlled, some individual level factors impacted the decision. PM’s with higher competence made better decisions, with a 22% effect size, when all other factors in the model were accounted for. Competent non-certified PM’s made better decisions as compared to certified incompetent PM’s.