Any business project is related to many various risks and threats. That is why the project development is to be carefully monitored and analysed. The best way to avoid difficulties appearing during the project administration process is to detect them at the earlier stages and take preventative measures right away. At the same time, the controlling and monitoring can be complicated by the unwillingness of the employees to report bad news about the projects.
The problem many large organisations are struggling to overcome is the immobility of the bad news about projects that occurs when some of the employees of the lower ranks withhold the negative reports for various reasons (Smith & Keil 2003). Due to the reluctance of the workers of lower ranks to report the bad news, the valuable information is unable to move up the hierarchy where the leaders would be able to address the existing problems. In fact, for the leaders a negative report is an opportunity to learn and improve, that way “bad news is good news” (Hopkins & Maslen 2015, p. 56). At the same time, the employees and the project managers often are the holders of the traditional perspective that identifies a negative report with a danger in moral and material aspects, which is known as “mum effect” (Natovich, Natovich & Derzy 2011).
Discussing the major causes of the reluctance to report bad news on the projects the researchers mainly focus on several major aspects such as the organisational culture of a company (individualist or collectivist), the individual personality features of the employees, and the overall climate at the workplace (Leidner & Kayworth, 2008; Natovich, Natovich & Derzy 2011). In other words, in the companies where the individual achievements are valued over the ones of teams and groups, the employees will be more likely to withhold negative information worrying that it would affect their personal results. Besides, some of the employees may be more psychologically predisposed to reporting all the news regardless of their quality, whereas the others may find it challenging to discuss failures with their superiors afraid to be blamed for them. Moreover, the climate at a workplace is one of the factors that affect the employees’ willingness to confess bad news.
As a result, to encourage the honest reports about negative results, the superiors are to create the kind of workplace atmosphere that would appreciate and recognise honesty. An organisation will have a better movement of the negative news up the hierarchy if its workers are informed that bad news reports would not be punished. The employees whose performances are motivated by fear of being fired for errors or lack of good results are more likely to hide their fails from the managers or cover up the truth which undermines the success of the whole organisation.
To conclude, targeting only the individuals psychologically predisposed to being honest about negative results is a way out but it seems much harder to accomplish than the enforcement of the atmosphere of fair and rational treatment and the appreciative workplace climate.
References
Hopkins, A & Maslen S 2015, Risky rewards: How Company Bonuses Affect Safety, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, UK.
Leidner, D & Kayworth, T 2008, Global information systems. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK.
Natovich, J, Natovich, R & Derzy, Z 2011, ‘Withholding Bad News in Information Technology Projects: The Effect of Positive Psychology’, PACIS 2011 Proceedings, no. 139, pp. 1-11.
Smith, HJ & Keil, M 2003 ‘The reluctance to report bad news on troubled software projects: a theoretical model’, Information Systems Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, pp.69-95.