Organizational Factors and Bad News Reporting on Troubled IT Projects

An individual’s reluctance to report bad news about a troubled IT project has been found to be an important contributor to project failure. While there are a variety of factors influencing the reluctance to report, prior IS research has mainly focused on situational factors rather than personal and organizational factors. In this paper, we examine the effects of certain organizational factors on an individual’s reporting behavior within the rubric of the basic whistle-blowing model adapted from Dozier and Miceli (1985). Specifically, we investigate how organizational structures/policies and managerial practices affect the organizational climate of silence. This study also examines how the climate of silence interacts with the three decision steps in the basic whistle-blowing model.