Project managers' reactions to project disruption: sponsor actions versus environmental uncertainty

Abstract

Purpose

Managing projects is an important part of operations management, but many projects fail. This study focuses on attribution processes of such disruption from the underrepresented perspective of the project manager. The authors consider two types of causes: the more frequently researched environmental uncertainty (i.e. uncontrollable events) and the scarcely researched uncertainty imposed by non-collaborative project sponsors (i.e. other-controllable events).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors test conceptual arguments grounded in attribution theory and the notion of psychological contracts in a scenario-based experiment among 325 practicing project managers.

Findings

The findings indicate that non-collaborative project sponsors negatively affect project managers' motivation, whereas uncontrollable disruptions leave hope to achieve positive future outcomes. This latter effect is further strengthened when project managers have an internal attribution style. They tend to blame the disruption on themselves and generally feel in control of achieving success even if they are not.

Originality/value

These socio-psychological insights nuance the economic idea that uncertainty reduces motivation per se in the context of project disruption appraisal. The authors contribute to the behavioral project management literature and general attribution theory and help guide the allocation of resources during the recovery of failed projects.

Citation

Franke, H., Wynstra, F., Nullmeier, F. and Nullmeier, C. (2022), "Project managers' reactions to project disruption: sponsor actions versus environmental uncertainty", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 42 No. 13, pp. 335-357. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-02-2022-0103

1. Introduction

In many organizations, projects lie at the heart of operations management (OM). The importance of managing projects has been strongly emphasized (Maylor et al., 2018) and the scholarly discussion of managing projects' exposure to uncertainty is ongoing in OM (Hernandez and Kreye, 2022). Project failure is one of the most pressing concerns in project management and has inspired research into the factors contributing to project survival and final success (e.g. Chandrasekaran et al., 2016; Schoenherr et al., 2017). Project failure and disruption are relevant because of the almost certain loss of resources and since, intriguingly, even important and well-managed projects still often fail in practice (Kiselev et al., 2020; Matta and Ashkenas, 2003). Therefore, a mature stream of research focuses on the main structural obstacles to project management, such as equivocality, dynamism and complexity (Chandrasekaran et al., 2016; Ramasesh and Browning, 2014; Salvador et al., 2021). Other previous studies emphasize that tangible behavioral factors, such as psychological safety (Bendoly, 2014), knowledge creation (Anand et al., 2010), project team design and leadership (e.g. Easton and Rosenzweig, 2012; Scott-Young and Samson, 2008), or project manager personality (Malach-Pines et al., 2009) are essential in project management.

One of the most important behavioral factors that make projects successful is support by top management (Avots, 1969; Gattiker and Carter, 2010; Zwikael and Globerson, 2006). Top management support has a social component and is therefore often studied using a dyadic perspective on a project sponsor from top management with sufficient power over resources and the operational project manager who runs the project (Dilts and Pence, 2006; Liu et al., 2015; Zwikael and Meredith, 2018). Previous work has highlighted that a lack of sponsor support is detrimental for projects, for instance, when insufficient information is provided (Bendoly and Swink, 2007). However, we know less about how managers respond once sponsors do not adequately fulfill their obligations to support projects. These obligations are manifold and include, for instance, providing sufficient resources, managing strategic risks and – importantly – not becoming a source of disruption themselves (Zwikael et al., 2019). Based on this literature, our research adopts a behavioral perspective and focuses on the lack of project sponsor cooperation, project disruption and project managers' behavioral responses. The project manager's response to project disruption is vitally important since it likely affects their motivation – a factor that researchers agree is critical (Schmid and Adams, 2008; Slevin and Pinto, 2007), yet is still under-represented in the behavioral project management literature. To date, only a few papers like Bendoly et al. (2010) and Bendoly and Swink (2007) have dealt with project managers' behavior in the OM domain (see Mishra and Browning, 2020), while none has focused on behavioral responses to failure to meet previously set targets.

The path from project disruption be it caused by sponsors' non-collaborative behavior or factors external to the organization, includes a causal search process of the project manager. Our study uses attribution theory to conceptualize the cognitive processes of managers as they assign the causes for disruption and to predict the behavioral response that ensues (Fiske and Taylor, 1991) It offers an effective foundation for developing hypotheses on the effects of different types of disruptions on project managers' motivation since it includes a selection of established categories to describe uncertainty. Attribution theory provides a specific framework in that it can distinguish different motivational effects of project disruptions not only based on the locus of disruption, but also based on the controllability of the disruption. Thereby, we can develop and test hypotheses regarding the differential effects (on the motivation of the project manager) of external disruptions that are either controllable or uncontrollable for the project sponsor. These causal search processes may even differ among project managers with different attribution styles (Martinko et al., 2006). Existing OM literature has applied and extended attribution theory in supply chain exchanges (e.g. Esslinger et al., 2019; Ried et al., 2021) but less for the context of project management.

We contribute to the discussion of project termination in the recent OM literature (Subramanian et al., 2020) and provide a behavioral perspective on disruptions that complements recent analytical works (Narayanan et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020). We focus on situations when top management does not “predict and provide” but fails to offer adequate support to the project manager (Holweg and Maylor, 2018). We continue the OM discussions on project termination that adopt an explicit focus on behavior (Dilts and Pence, 2006) and individual differences in project management (Chipulu et al., 2014). Thereby, this study answers the call for more experimental work in project management (Mishra and Browning, 2020) and research on projects from an operations perspective in general (Maylor et al., 2018). We extend the small but growing literature stream of behavioral project management studies (see Fahimnia et al., 2019 for a review). Moreover, a better understanding of attributional differences in project disruption appraisal is also practically relevant. Arguably, project managers' motivation is an important precondition to established project recovery techniques such as learning from failure (Howick and Eden, 2007; Morais-Storz et al., 2020).

The remainder of this paper establishes the research environment of behavioral project management and embeds the study in the broader literature on psychological contracts and attribution. We thereby draw on the project and OM literature and complement it with a review of the supply chain management (SCM) sub-stream that has applied attribution logic more frequently. We then describe our scenario-based experiment among 325 practicing managers and the subsequent findings: non-collaborative project sponsor actions negatively affect project managers' motivation, whereas uncontrollable disruptions leave hope to achieve positive future outcomes. Intriguingly, project managers' attribution style – an individual trait commonly conceptualized as context-free – affects the appraisal of project disruption only for some types of uncertainty while others remain unaffected. Finally, the study derives implications for management research and practice.

2. Literature and theory

2.1 The role of project sponsors

Several studies mention a lack of top management support as the prime factor that leads to project failure (Gupta et al., 2019; Hwang and Lu, 2013), and studies as early as Avots (1969) have pointed out its central importance. The subsequent literature has examined the role of the project sponsor more closely. For instance, Gattiker and Carter (2010) show that top management support can enable project managers to gather commitment from the organization. Kanwal et al. (2017) point out that such support can also make traditional project management mechanisms more effective. Furthermore, studies agree that acquiring the necessary support from top management requires social skills (Amoako-Gyampah et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2015). Once such support dwindles and a project fails, most studies explain the recovery primarily from a learning perspective. For instance, it is helpful to revise old assumptions and come up with a new problem representation (Morais-Storz et al., 2020), to separate personal and corporate learning to maximize both (Howick and Eden, 2007), or to immediately sketch a new perspective for a failed project (Havila et al., 2013).

Few studies focus on what sponsors precisely did that led to project failure or disruption and on the behavioral responses of the project manager. Kiselev et al. (2020) study an unintentional lack of sponsor support by failing to manage the dynamic context adequately. Similarly, Toivonen and Toivonen (2014) describe that the sponsor failed to monitor the development of a project. The initial lack of support led to late sponsor interventions that were interpreted as punishment by the project manager and team, which disrupted the unity in the project. When sponsors delay deciding whether to continue or terminate a project, project managers may perceive a “creeping death” and, once termination is decided, cannot learn from failure if the next project follows immediately (Shepherd et al., 2014).

Our work connects most closely to researchers that address post-disruption and forward-facing motivational concepts. Shepherd et al. (2009) discuss the process of coping with project manager failure: managing post-failure grief is best addressed by allowing emotions instead of suppressing them and leveraging social support from the organization as a coping mechanism. Our study takes one step back relative to this literature on recovery during post-disruption management. We argue that project managers' motivation is an important precondition to recovery. Therefore, it is important to understand the appraisal and causal search process once the project manager realizes the disruption.

2.2 Uncertainty and expectancy violation

OM studies grounded in attribution logic stress that uncertainty of outcomes may result from uncontrollable environmental factors and stakeholders' lack of cooperative behavior (Akkermans et al., 2019; Nullmeier et al., 2016; Steinbach et al., 2018). However, a lack of project sponsor support is not only a source of economic-type uncertainty but also has psychological consequences and ultimately motivational effects. The notion of a psychological contract between an employee and the organization, with the project sponsor as its representative in our case (Morrison and Robinson, 1997; Müller et al., 2019), is useful for understanding project sponsors' non-collaboration. A psychological contract includes beliefs about the reciprocal relationship between the project sponsor and the project manager in a project management context. From the project manager's perspective, the contract includes expectations about the sponsor's contribution to the project's success. Non-collaboration would violate this expectation. Existing literature emphasizes that distributing responsibility in projects favors psychological contract fulfillment (Agarwal et al., 2021) and that violations can reduce well-being in an educational project management context (Bordia et al., 2010). Our study is among the few that relates to psychological contract concepts in business project management.

The broader OM literature has made more use of the psychological contract concept and dominantly applies it using an inter-firm perspective—typically buyer-supplier settings. This is different from the project context, as it examines partners of a value chain (buyer and supplier) instead of individuals in a vertical hierarchy (sponsor and manager). However, its attribution-based theorizing is compatible since it shares the dyadic view of a delegating party and a delegatee with our project management study. This literature has examined timing or severity of breaches (Eckerd et al., 2013; Mir et al., 2017), how trust can be repaired after a violation (Cheng et al., 2019; Kaufmann et al., 2018), or contract over-fulfillment (Esslinger et al., 2019). Our study relates to this broader stream on psychological contracts in OM where it refers to the attribution of violations and individual differences. Related studies have predominantly taken the delegating (i.e. buyer) perspective and have distinguished breaches that are within partners' responsibility from general disruptions (e.g. bad weather), suggesting that the former weigh heavier (Eckerd et al., 2013; Mir et al., 2017). These studies suggest that firms respond by reducing interactions with the breaching partner or even replacing the partner altogether if precautionary actions of their partners could have prevented the problem cause.

In summary, we complement the project management literature and the structurally similar supply chain literature by taking the project manager's perspective on breaches caused by the sponsor's non-collaborative behavior and environmental uncertainty. Thereby, we take the under-represented perspective of the project manager, along with only a few other works (e.g. Kaufmann et al., 2018). In addition, we extend research on attribution by differentiating the origin of project disruptions and including attribution styles as a meaningful individual contingency. Attribution style is a variable that has not been examined before in studies on project disruption. At the same time, the wider literature on behavioral SCM has studied how individual differences such as cultural background can shape responses to disruptions and affect the evaluation of contractual incentives (Eckerd et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2018). Our approach picks up the interest in such personal differences from a project management perspective.

2.3 Attribution theory

The core premise of attribution theory is that individuals have an innate desire to understand the causes of important events or outcomes. These attributions – the perceived cause – influence their expectancies of future events and subsequent motivation (Heider, 1985; Martinko et al., 2007a, b). Wong and Weiner (1981) suggest that managers spontaneously engage in attributional activities, referred to as causal search, to assign responsibility for outcomes. Figure 1 depicts the entire cognitive process of how causal attributions of success and failure lead to coping and subsequent motivation. Within this process, causal search is the process leading to causal attributions after experiencing an outcome (first arrow in Figure 1).

First, managers determine the source of a cause, which can be either internal or external, termed locus of causality. Second, they assess whether the cause is persistent or temporary, termed stability (stable vs. unstable). Third, they determine the extent to which the cause is under an individual's volitional control, termed controllability (controllable vs. uncontrollable). Recent studies have further explicated the controllability dimension by distinguishing between self-controllability and other-controllability (Gurevich et al., 2012; Weiner, 2018). Self-controllability refers to the degree to which managers perceive the cause to be something that they can control. Other-controllability is the degree to which managers perceive the cause to be under the volition of others, within or outside of their organization (controllable vs. uncontrollable by others) [1].

In the project management context, locus of causality refers to whether the project manager perceives that an outcome is caused by internal or external parties, e.g. the project sponsor or an external partner. Stability refers to whether project managers perceive a cause to affect outcomes across periods (stable) or only in the previous period (unstable). Self-controllability denotes whether project managers perceive a cause to be under their own control (controllable by self) or whether they cannot control the cause that has affected the project (uncontrollable by self). Other-controllability refers to whether a project manager perceives a cause to be under the control of, for example, the project sponsor (controllable by others) or not under the control of any other involved stakeholders (uncontrollable by others).

Our study examines project managers' reactions to disruptions (negative outcomes) with a particular focus on other-controllability, namely non-collaborative sponsor actions versus uncertainty that no-one can control, such as the weather (Mir et al., 2017). Our literature review has shown that the focus on post-disruption coping is scarce in the project operations domain (Gupta et al., 2019; Shepherd et al., 2014). We focus on other-controllability due to its likely relevance for project managers' motivation and earlier motivation literature's extensive coverage of other causal dimensions (Weiner, 2018). Table 1 summarizes the key difference – other-controllability – between the two types of uncertainty examined in this study.

It is important to note that two of the three causal dimensions in Table 1 are not in scope for our study. Locus and self-controllability are naturally external and uncontrollable for environmental uncertainty and non-collaborative sponsor actions. Stability, however, can be both stable and unstable for both types of uncertainty. It can be stable for environmental uncertainty if a project fails because the facilities of a major partner have burned down but unstable if the weather disrupts the in-time delivery of parts from that partner. Our later hypotheses derivation takes guidance from the OM literature that has consistently conceptualized these types of uncertainty as unstable (i.e. weather or transport costs; Eckerd et al., 2013; Mir et al., 2017) and applies the same unstable logic to non-collaborative sponsor actions.

2.4 Attribution responses

Variations in attributions are of interest to our study since combinations of causal dimensions have unique effects on the motivation of managers (Weiner, 2018). Responses of attributing individuals, project managers in our case, determine whether they will be motivated to achieve outcomes in the future. While the attribution of negative outcomes in the project management literature is under-researched, the motivation literature has made significant advances. Table 2 provides an overview of combinations among outcomes, causal attribution dimensions, and emotions that have been identified in previous studies on attribution and motivation (Weiner, 2018). Note that not all conceivable combinations of outcomes and causal dimensions are listed here since previous research has not identified unequivocal emotions for some combinations.

We focus our conceptual framework and hypotheses on the other-controllability causal attribution dimension. In line with a few other OM studies, we argue that other-controllability of disruptions or breaches are an interesting and relevant phenomenon (Mir et al., 2017; Reimann et al., 2017). Investigating differences in the locus of the cause of disruption is less relevant, as classical agency theory posits that sources of outcome uncertainty are by definition external. Investigating the stability dimension of causal attributions is relevant within the context of project management, but classical agency theory offers predictions for the effects of stability. The lower the stability of the causes of disruption or success, the higher the outcome uncertainty. In sum, attribution theory can provide unique insights into the controllability dimension.

2.5 Attribution style

Although attribution theory provides us with a general framework, the causal search process is not generic and is subject to the attribution styles of individual managers (Abramson et al., 1978; Kent and Martinko, 1995; Russell, 1991). Attribution styles are trait-like characteristics that can explain similar attributions across different types of outcomes (Martinko et al., 2007a, b). Attribution styles are useful in predicting both attributions and motivation since they affect attributions, which in turn influence motivation (see for a review Martinko et al., 2006).

Literature distinguishes between intrapersonal and social attribution styles (Martinko et al., 2012). Intrapersonal attribution styles are concerned with managers' causal attributions for their own outcomes, whereas social attribution styles describe how managers attribute the causes of other people's outcomes. We focus on intrapersonal attribution styles as our study is concerned with managers' causal attributions for the immediate project outcome, which is their prime responsibility in project management (Zwikael et al., 2019). Externally-oriented and internally-oriented attribution styles have received the most research attention (Abramson et al., 1978; Douglas and Martinko, 2001). According to this dichotomy, managers with externally-oriented styles tend to make external, unstable and uncontrollable attributions for disruption. Managers with this attribution style tend to attribute success to themselves and disruption to others (Harvey and Martinko, 2009). They often feel good about themselves and their capacity for success. In contrast, managers with an internally-oriented attribution style tend to make internal, stable and controllable attributions for disruption. We posit that these individual differences among managers can explain differences in responses to project disruptions with the same degree of other-controllability. The following sections formalize these arguments.

3. Hypothesis development

3.1 Other-controllability

When project managers fail to achieve project goals, they go through a causal search process, investigating the locus of the cause of disruption, its stability, the degree of self-controllability, and the degree of other-controllability. In the case of environmental factors leading to disruption, the locus is external, the cause is unstable or at least difficult to predict (as in Eckerd et al., 2013; Mir et al., 2017), self-controllability is minimal, and other-controllability is also minimal or zero. We can expect the project manager to feel frustrated about the current disrupted project, which triggers backward-facing sense making processes to learn from the project disruption that just occurred (Shepherd et al., 2014). However, there are also forward-facing responses that are important for the project manager's motivational response for future projects. Despite the frustration and the learning that ensues, the psychological contract of mutual expectations has not been violated from the project manager's perspective (Weiner, 2018). Project managers sympathize with their sponsors since they also suffer from project disruption and will feel hope for future outcomes considering that the cause of the disruption may change in the future (Weiner, 2018) (Table 2). In sum, following the notation in Weiner (2018):

Outcome (project disruption) → Cause (environmental factor) → Essential causal dimensions (locus: external, stability: unstable, self-controllability: uncontrollable, other-controllability: uncontrollable) → Emotion (hope, sympathy, understanding)→ Motivational effect (positive).

This is in line with research on motivated reasoning that finds that individual optimism relates to individuals' cognitive distancing from failure (Grover et al., 2019). Thus, project managers can distance themselves from the immediate disruption and focus on possible future outcomes, ultimately leading to positive expectations and motivation. In addition, they sympathize with the fact that the sponsor cannot be held accountable and will not blame the sponsor for the disruption. The resulting sympathy has also been associated with helping behavior (Rudolph et al., 2004). In sum, we argue that the project manager is likely to overcome the project disruption and that the attribution process will not lead to psychological contract violation but to increased motivation to obtain future rewards for the case of uncertainty imposed by the external environment (Weiner, 1986, 2018):

H1.

Project disruption due to external, self-uncontrollable, unstable, and other-uncontrollable environmental factors is positively related to project managers' achievement motivation.

When project managers fail to achieve project outcomes due to non-collaborative sponsor actions, they go through a causal search process with a different result. In this case, the locus is external, the cause is unstable, self-controllability is minimal and other-controllability is present (different to the environmental factor leading to disruption). As noted, we follow the (sparsely) available OM literature and conceptualize the attribution of uncertainty as unstable (Eckerd et al., 2013; Mir et al., 2017). Based on attribution theory, we predict that the response will be hope, due to the unstable cause (H1), yet importantly will also involve anger and blame, which are important factors in OM decisions (Polyviou et al., 2018). The lack of sponsor support contradicts the ex ante expectations the project manager held towards the sponsor. This leads to a violation in the psychological contract relation and will result in a predominantly negative motivational effect. In sum:

Outcome (project disruption) → Cause (non-collaborative sponsor action) → Essential causal dimensions (locus: external, stability: unstable, self-controllability: uncontrollable, other-controllability: controllable) → Emotion (hope, anger, blame) → Motivational effect (negative).

Given the realization that the effect of non-collaborative sponsor actions on project outcomes is under the sponsor's control, the project manager will experience anger. Even while attribution theory suggests the emergence of hope grounded in the unstable nature of the sponsor's behavior (Weiner, 2018), anger is likely to dominate. Anger is consistently among the strongest human responses and can over-write others such as disgust, sadness, or surprise (Coren and Russell, 1992). Furthermore, project managers will tend to return to their anger rather than focusing on new stimuli (e.g. future possible project success), which leads to a persistent and self-reinforcing negative effect (Pérez-Dueñas et al., 2014). In sum, the initial anger and the further contemplation on the disruption will likely dominate the hope of future success and result in a decreased motivation to achieve project outcomes (Rudolph et al., 2004; Weiner, 2018).

H2.

Project disruption due to external, self-uncontrollable, unstable but other-controllable non-collaborative sponsor actions is negatively related to project managers' achievement motivation.

3.2 Attribution style

Individuals classify different types of uncertainty along the causal dimensions based on their attribution style (Kent and Martinko, 1995). The perceived causal dimensions (e.g. internal or external) ascribed to environmental factors and non-collaborative sponsor actions differ per project manager. Consequently, the motivational effects are likely different across project managers too. When confronted with a disruption, project managers with externally-oriented attribution styles generally tend to believe that the causes of the disruption are external, unstable, and uncontrollable (Abramson et al., 1978; Douglas and Martinko, 2001). For example, they will tend to blame the weather or competitors' unfair behavior, allowing them to feel better about the disruption. Project managers with internally-oriented attribution styles tend to display the opposite pattern, as they generally perceive causes of disruptions to be internal, stable, and controllable. For instance, even if the cause is external, they believe they should have prepared better for weather turbulence or anticipated the competition.

Project managers with internally-oriented attribution styles will generally engage in proactive actions to mitigate negative effects in the future, even if true mitigation is not plausible. Even when facing conclusive evidence of uncontrollability, their attribution style tells them that parts of the problem are subject to their own influence. As a result, we expect that project managers with an internally-oriented attribution style develop a stronger motivation to mitigate uncertainty and achieve future outcomes. In contrast, project managers with externally-oriented attribution styles would attribute the responsibility to act to the sponsor or others. We expect these attributional differences to be similar for environmental, uncontrollable disruptions and non-collaborative sponsor actions. Attribution styles are deep personal traits that shape our cognition, such as the dominance of emotions over one another that also applies across contexts (Coren and Russell, 1992; Pérez-Dueñas et al., 2014).

Specifically, in the case of non-other-controllable sources of disruption (environmental factors), project managers in general will not blame the project sponsor and increase their motivation to obtain future project outcomes. Relative to the project managers with the externally-oriented attribution style, however, the internally-oriented ones will believe that if they invest more effort in the future, they can somehow pre-empt or mitigate these environmental sources of disruption. In the case of other-controllable sources of disruption (non-collaborative sponsor actions), project managers will be angry and demotivated. Relative to the project managers with the externally-oriented attribution style, however, the internally-oriented ones are less inclined to blame the specific counterpart and be demotivated, as they hope that they themselves can somehow play a role in preventing such non-collaborative sponsor behavior in the future.

Thus, we formulate the following two moderation hypotheses for project disruption due to environmental uncertainty and non-collaborative sponsor actions to complete our research model (Figure 2):

H3.

The positive relationship between disruptions due to environmental factors and project manager motivation is stronger when the project manager's attribution style is more internally oriented.

H4.

The negative relationship between disruptions due to non-collaborative sponsor actions and project manager motivation is weaker when the project manager's attribution style is more internally oriented.

4. Methodology

We chose a scenario-based role-playing experiment; since, first, experiments have the power to isolate a nuanced effect based on attributional processes with high internal validity (Siemsen, 2011). Second, the appraisal of disruption and impact on subsequent motivation are individual-level behavioral factors that are well suited for examination using scenario-based experiments (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014; Eckerd et al., 2020). Third, significant events leading to the disruption of a project do not happen regularly, and project termination can stretch out in practice (Shepherd et al., 2014). A scenario-based experiment solves these complexities. Furthermore, it avoids recalling bias of alternative survey approaches. Finally, our research setting involves the project manager's admission of failure, which can be a sensitive topic for respondents. Scenario-based experiments can reduce the influence of possible desirability bias (Rungtusanatham et al., 2011). In general, scenario-based experiments are an established technique for OM studies grounded in social psychology (see for example Ried et al., 2021; Sarafan et al., 2020).

4.1 Experimental design

Our experiment employs a 2 (disruption due to environmental factors) × 2 (disruption due to non-collaborative sponsor actions) factorial design and includes attribution style as a measured moderator for both types of disruption. Thus, the design combines two factors that we manipulated using vignettes (both disruption types) and a non-manipulated measured factor (attribution styles). The variation in attribution styles occurs naturally due to personal differences between our participants since no credible way of manipulating the attribution style is available.

We followed the three-stage creation and validation process proposed by Rungtusanatham et al. (2011) to design and validate vignettes for our scenario-based experiment. First, we studied the research context for role-playing and identified factors of interest. We identified roles that capture the research context and fit a wide range of participants in our target population. We positioned the scenario in an innovation and product development project setting, similar to many project management studies (e.g. Morais-Storz et al., 2020; Shepherd et al., 2009; Shepherd et al., 2014). Second, we developed a series of vignettes, including one common module and four experimental cue modules that capture different levels of uncertainty. Third, we asked six practitioners and five academics to review our vignettes for clarity and missing information. We made minor corrections based on the feedback we received. To verify external and convergent validity (Bachrach and Bendoly, 2011), we pilot-tested our experimentation protocol, the realism of our vignettes, and our manipulation checks with a separate sample of 43 undergraduate students (recruited through the subject pool of a European business school) and a sample of 24 practitioners (recruited through LinkedIn). We received feedback on some minor mistakes in the instructions and corrected them.

The scenario asked participants to assume the role of a project manager in a firm that produces organic cosmetics (see online-Appendix 1). The manager oversaw a development process for a premium shampoo using a maximum budget of 1M EUR within the bounds of a pre-specified deadline. The scenario explained several tasks and responsibilities, such as the coordination of diverse stakeholders. The project manager's goal was to oversee the shampoo's development and meet the deadline and budget. Thus, the participants received contextually rich information on the project management setting without overburdening them (online-Appendix 1).

The design randomly assigned each participant to one of the four treatments we administered in the experimental cue modules. All participants experienced project disruption, yet due to different causes. For a disruption due to environmental factors, we used a narrative of new regulations that forbade certain ingredients and thereby delayed the market launch of the shampoo. For a disruption due to non-collaborative sponsor actions, we described that the sponsor demanded changes to the design based on his personal taste during the late stages of the project. Both uncertainties posed threats to the project in the scenario and differed in their other-controllability. Participants were informed that the shampoo design had not been completed within the set timeframe and that the project had failed to reach its goals. We subsequently asked participants whether they would be motivated to re-engage and continue their work in the future.

The control condition did not include any of these explicit obstacles to the project but still included project disruption. This minimalistic configuration of the control group is superior to two alternatives: Not including project disruption in the control group would implicitly impose a second manipulation (disruption itself) and giving further details on the causes of disruption (e.g. not caused by regulation or not by the supervisor) would reveal our hypotheses to the control group and impose demand effects (Eckerd et al., 2020). We have no reason to believe that participants' own theory on the possible disruption origin is not randomly distributed in our control group.

4.2 Participants

Participants were recruited through the Prolific online subject recruitment platform, which has attracted attention also among OM and supply chain scholars (DuHadway et al., 2018). Various studies have demonstrated that data obtained through online subject recruitment platforms are comparable or even more reliable than those obtained via traditional data collection methods (Buhrmester et al., 2016; Sprouse, 2011). However, widely used platforms such as MTurk are not explicitly designed for scientific research, leading to challenges related to transparency (Palan and Schitter, 2018). Prolific addresses these challenges, for example, by facilitating the use of transparent recruitment procedures.

To recruit participants from the target population, we did not rely on students but exclusively recruited practitioners who were employed at the time of the study, which is the preferred option for OM (Bachrach and Bendoly, 2011; Eckerd et al., 2020). Due to the otherwise diverse nature of organizations and the breadth of project managers' backgrounds (Salvador et al., 2021), we chose not to use any additional filters and sample randomly. The resulting pool of eligible Prolific users consisted of 11,322 eligible participants. We contacted all these eligible participants and asked them to minimize environmental distractions during the study by completing the exercise in a quiet environment and informing them that their attention level is important. We obtained responses from 405 participants and excluded the 80 responses that failed the standardized attention check (see online-Appendix 2). The remaining 325 participants were aged between 20 and 61 (M = 35.33, SD = 8.75), and 187 were women. The number of years of work experience ranged between 1 and 45 years (M = 12.68, SD = 9.31), and their project management experience ranged between 1 and 4 years (M = 2.42, SD = 0.81). Ninety-two individuals worked in production industries, 170 in service industries, 62 in other industries, and one without information. 122 individuals had senior employee roles, 186 had employee roles, and 17 provided no information. Our sample is primarily European (263 responses) but also includes data from North America (55 responses), South America (four responses) and Oceania (three responses).

4.3 Compensation

Project managers are commonly full-time employees who earn most of their salary based on a fixed employment contract. They also tend to receive bonuses for successful projects based on our learnings from the scenario evaluation. We balance these competing demands by paying out a fixed compensation via the online recruitment platform ($10.55 per hour) and describing a lost bonus due to project disruption in the scenarios. The fixed payment scheme is consistent with several other published studies on individual decision-making in OM contexts (Esslinger et al., 2019; Goebel et al., 2012; Kaufmann et al., 2018). It avoids two fundamental problems: demand effects when participants try to cater to what they believe is the desired outcome of the study to maximize their compensation (Eckerd et al., 2020) and ethical problems of assigning lower payments per design. If economic reward schemes are applied, the payments should reflect valid performance metrics like order picking performance (De Vries et al., 2016) or supplier efficiency (Franke et al., 2021), which is infeasible for our design. Our study focuses on behavioral responses in line with the social-psychology experimentation paradigm (Eckerd et al., 2020).

4.4 Variables and measures

We used the previously validated Member Attribution Style Questionnaire to measure attribution style (Kent and Martinko, 1995). This questionnaire contains nine generic employment scenarios with negative consequences, such as a lay-off decision unrelated to the shampoo scenario. The instruments ask participants to imagine the situations and indicate on a seven-point Likert scale whether they believe that the causes for each of the nine scenarios were either “completely due to other people and circumstances” or “completely due to me.” They were also asked to indicate whether these causes were likely to exist in the future, ranging from “never present” to “always present”. The scores were aggregated as in Martinko et al. (2007a, b). The lower end of our resulting score reflects an externally-oriented attribution style, whereas the higher end reflects an internally-oriented attribution style (alpha 0.72).

We used the previously validated five-point Likert-type scale on the motivation to achieve future outcomes of Erez and Judge (2001). After being prompted with the opportunity to continue the project work, we asked participants to indicate whether they agreed with the following three statements: “I really want to succeed on this task,” “I look forward to doing the same task,” and “Because I am not motivated to do well, I would probably not perform well as a result” (reverse-coded). We aggregated the scores so that lower scores reflected project managers with less motivation to continue their work in the future (alpha 0.75). Online-Appendix 2 shows the exact scales and online-Appendix 3 shows all correlations. We acknowledge that motivation is one of several relevant emotional emergent states. Motivation also allows conclusions about related concepts like commitment, as it correlates significantly with all dimensions of commitment, for example (Al-Madi et al., 2017).

The independent variables are binary manipulation dummies. We control for several variables that may influence respondents' choices in the scenario-based experiment. We capture their age, experience (in general and with project management) and rank as dummy since more prior exposure to project work may mean that participants are more used to project disruption and may ease the appraisal. We capture respondents' origin with dummy variables for production, service and other industries and include several dummies for their geographic origin to control for any industry or regional differences. In addition, we include gender and control for perceptions of the other three causal dimensions (locus, stability and controllability) while we manipulate other-controllability (Table 1). Online-Appendix 3 shows a full correlation table including all control variables.

In addition to the above variables, we offered the respondents a free text field to submit general thoughts and feedback on the study after the procedure. We enhance the discussion and limitations with a selection of illustrative quotes to further explain the quantitative findings.

5. Analysis and results

5.1 Validity checks

We carried out manipulation checks to establish whether our treatments effectively captured differing levels of our core constructs (Bachrach and Bendoly, 2011; Rungtusanatham et al., 2011). To measure the level of perceived uncertainty, we adapted three items from the environmental uncertainty scale developed by Celly and Frazier (1996). Participants indicated on two separately adapted 3-item scales whether environmental factors or non-collaborative sponsor actions, respectively, put the project's success at risk. An example item was “… decrease the likelihood of meeting the product development deadline” (see online-Appendix 2). The means for the respective scales differed significantly between the conditions of environmental uncertainty (M = 3.09 vs. 4.12, p < 0.01 difference 95% interval [1.12; 0.82]) and for uncertainty via non-collaborative sponsor actions (M = 3.06 vs. 4.37, p < 0.01, difference 95% interval [1.51; 1.12]). Thus, participants correctly identified both types of uncertainty. Moreover, we verified whether participants understood their main difference: i.e. other-controllability. We asked participants whether their own disruption was controllable by others on a three-item scale for other-controllability adapted from the causal dimension scale in McAuley et al. (1992) (shown in online-Appendix 2). The manipulation of disruption due to non-collaborative sponsor actions showed a significant effect (M = 3.62 vs. 4.03, p < 0.01, difference 95% interval [0.67; 0.17]) vis-à-vis the environmental uncertainty group. Thus, the participants correctly understood that the former was other-controllable while the latter was not. Finally, we performed confounding checks to verify that the other attribution dimensions remained unaffected by manipulating other-controllability as recommended by Bachrach and Bendoly (2011). We found no systematic differences at the 5%-level for locus (M = 2.10 vs. 1.87, difference 95% interval [0; 0.46]), stability (M = 2.58 vs. 2.68, difference 95% interval [−0.33; 0.13]) and controllability (M = 2.42 vs. 2.23, difference 95% interval [−0.10; 0.46]).

5.2 Hypothesis testing

We used SPSS 25.0 combined with the PROCESS bootstrapping macro to conduct regression analyses that test our hypotheses. Table 3 presents the results as unstandardized coefficients for interpretation vis-à-vis the original scales. First, we hypothesized that disruptions due to environmental factors would be positively related to motivation to achieve future project outcomes and second, that disruptions due to non-collaborative sponsor actions would be negatively related to motivation. Our results provide support for both H1 and H2. Disruption due to environmental factors positively affects motivation to achieve project outcomes (B = 0.245, p < 0.01). Conversely, disruption due to non-collaborative sponsor actions negatively affects project manager motivation (B = −0.369, p < 0.01).

Second, we hypothesized that project managers' internally-oriented attribution style positively moderates the main effect of disruption due to environmental causes on motivation. Our results provide support for Hypothesis 3, since the interaction between attribution style and disruption due to environmental factors was significant (B = 0.493, p = 0.024). We explored this result further using Hayes' Process Macro and found that the slope for internally-oriented attribution styles (one standard deviation above the mean) was positive and significant (B = 0.454, p < 0.01; also see Figure 3). However, but the slope for externally-oriented attribution styles (one standard deviation below the mean) was found to be non-significant (B = 0.038, p = 0.761). The slope at the mean value of attribution style shown in Figure 3 resembles the basic effect of environmental uncertainty (B = 0.245, p < 0.01; Table 3). Alternatively plotted using the Johnson–Neyman technique, Figure 4 shows that the effect of environmental uncertainty becomes first significant at the 5%-level at a value of attribution style of 2.795 (0.134 below the mean) on the original 7-point scale and remains significant above. All lower levels of attribution style (more externally-oriented) make the effect insignificant.

Our results do not provide support for H4 since the interaction between project managers' internally-oriented attribution style and the effect of disruption due to non-collaborative sponsor actions on motivation was found to be non-significant (B = 0.104, p = 0.622).

6. Discussion and conclusions

6.1 Theoretical contributions

Our research extends the discussion around project management in the OM domain in general (Fahimnia et al., 2019; Maylor et al., 2018), particularly where it refers to project disruption and behavioral responses of the lead project manager. Despite the significant financial impacts that project disruptions can have (Urbig et al., 2013), we know relatively little about post-disruption attribution processes. The literature has focused on learning and recovery, implicitly assuming that staff will be sufficiently motivated (Howick and Eden, 2007; Morais-Storz et al., 2020). We join the few studies on the behavioral middle piece (Shepherd et al., 2014) – processes between the decision to terminate a project (Dilts and Pence, 2006) and post-disruption recovery.

Our research shows that the attributional style of managers conditions how they respond to risks that affect project disruptions. Managers with an internally-oriented attribution style believe that they can affect or mitigate environmental factors, such as dynamic regulations, compared to those with an externally-oriented attribution style (Martinko et al., 2007a, b). Our results show that project disruption will trigger forward-facing motivation to attain future outcomes beyond the natural disappointment about the past (H1). Yet, this is foremost true for those individuals that tend to attribute internally (Figure 4). These results indicate a strong boundary condition of attribution style in the project disruption context, which warrants further discussion.

It seems that internally attributing project managers tended to ex-post decompose the disruption to find their own preventable mistakes in scenarios that they considered as uncontrollable ex ante (i.e. satisfactory validity checks). This was particularly palpable in the qualitative exit statements we retrieved from the participants after reading the scenario, completing checks and measures and reflecting on the disruption. For example, they stated that the reason for disruption was “Myself for not anticipating a possible change [in regulations]” or “Edwin de Jong [sic., project sponsor] and his stubbornness, but also me, for the fact that I did not find the correct arguments to convince him […]” or “Partly me. I should have anchored the fragrance choice earlier”. These individuals signal strongly internally-oriented attribution styles. The decomposition of the disruption into sub-causes small enough to make possible internal attributions seem to provide these respondents with a sense of control, hope and motivation (Weiner, 2018).

Other respondents described that they were not responsible for the disruption, and some strongly rejected the responsibility: “Not me!”. These individuals with externally-oriented attribution styles find themselves confirmed in their general beliefs when facing environmental uncertainty. They do not respond with higher motivation in our study when considering the individual difference. Thus, our study suggests that attribution style plays an important role in coping with project disruption (Figure 4). However, it also indicates (unexpectedly) that some project managers may correctly identify sources of uncertainty as external and uncontrollable (the setting of our study) but still look for internal and controllable features once the disruption has occurred. This indicates that attribution styles are not always active interpretation mechanisms like risk aversion but require activation via a stimulus (e.g. a disruption) to take their full effect in project management.

Interestingly, we find no effect of the individual attribution style on project managers' attribution of disruption when the project sponsor is responsible for the disruption. In that case, both internally and externally attributing individuals respond with a strong decrease in motivation (H2). Even internally attributing individuals do not seem to feel able to change the detrimental behavior of the sponsor in a future collaboration (H4). This finding is in line with previous supply chain research on negative responses to buyer contract breaches (Kaufmann et al., 2018), yet not consistent with our expectations grounded in attribution theory. As our study focuses on forward-facing motivation for future project work, construal-level theory may provide a possible explanation (Trope and Liberman, 2010).

Construal-level theory and its concept of psychological distance propose that individuals make plans for their future by forming abstract construals of distal objects. Furthermore, affective reactions to objects decrease the more psychologically distant they are (Trope and Liberman, 2010). For our case, the environmental uncertainty imposed by changing regulations is a relatively distant construal with less perceived risk for future project management. Arguably, firm-external environmental sources of uncertainty are generally more psychologically distant to project managers than their firm-internal sponsors. The comparably weak negative affective response to possible future environmental uncertainty allows attribution theory's hope mechanisms to take effect (Weiner, 2018). However, although just as unpredictable (see validity check), the project sponsor has a stronger perceived presence and immediacy. In construal-level theory terms, the lower psychological distance of sponsor non-collaboration triggers a stronger negative affective reaction that overrides attribution theory's hopeful response (see H1) and the conditioning effect of the attribution style (rejected H4). Thus, our study indicates a possible link between attribution and construal-level theories that future research can explore further. Notably, our study is among the few but not the first to propose this conceptual link. Future research can use existing studies that suggest that construal-level theory is partly grounded in assumptions of attribution (Wiesenfeld et al., 2017) or earlier work that proposed overlaps at the group level of analysis (Wilson et al., 2013).

In summary, we provide some of the first evidence on project disruption appraisal in the behavioral OM literature (Fahimnia et al., 2019). We thereby help extending the OM discussion further into the project management arena (Maylor et al., 2018). Specifically, our work deepens the discussion of appraisal and emotional consequences of problems in projects vis-à-vis the few similar studies (Shepherd et al., 2009, 2014) and also relates laterally to SCM studies. We are among the first that take the “inferior” delegatee perspective in an OM context. Thereby, we work alongside Kaufmann et al. (2018) who have researched the consequences of buyer behavior on psychological contracts held by the “inferior” supplier. We are among the first to build on the psychological contract idea in project management and thus contribute to further establishing it as concept in project management. Establishing it is useful since it is specific enough to mirror idiosyncrasies of projects, like spillovers from one project to the next, and general enough to enable a broad discussion that spans across projects and supply chains.

6.2 Managerial implications and limitations

Our study suggests that project sponsors' non-collaboration creates negative responses from those in charge of managing the project. Importantly, however, we caution senior management not to assume that established post-disruption techniques like learning from disruption or problem reformulation (Morais-Storz et al., 2020; Shepherd et al., 2014) will work just as well for projects that failed for lack of sponsor support. Our study indicates that the very precondition for recovery, project managers' motivation, is severely hurt by sponsors' non-collaboration. We suggest that this dynamic roots in managers' disappointment and a violation of the psychological contract (i.e. mutual expectations) between project sponsor and manager. We find that the strong negative experience of lacking support even over-rides project managers' individual differences that play an important role for other uncertainty types.

Specifically, attribution style (short: internal tend to blame themselves vs. external tend to blame all but themselves) determines how project managers deal with disruptions that not even the sponsor could control. Internal attributing managers will search for ways to curb the risk and respond with higher motivation to achieve in the future. However, external attributing managers feel at ease with the match of an uncontrollable cause and their general tendency to assume uncontrollability. We advise senior management to encourage those externally attributing project managers to not entirely discount their ability to hedge for future project disruptions, and engage in important post-disruption reflection (Morais-Storz et al., 2020). Heuristics to identify these over-confident externally attributing managers are confident to talk about their achievements (Feather, 1969; Feather and Simon, 1971) or that are male (Deaux and Emswiller, 1974).

This study has several limitations. We only examined the first of many possible disruptions. Initial positive responses of internally attributing project managers may decrease or even reverse as more time passes between disruption and evaluation or when failure persists after several attempts. This limitation inspires longitudinal research that may also consider mutual effects between several projects. Furthermore, we have not considered post-disruption incentives. One of the participants stated that “a question should be asked for the hypothetical scenario as to whether any incentives will be offered for me to continue to work on the project”. While measuring the motivational loss of disruptions in currency is less conceptually interesting, more research in post-disruption repair techniques after sponsor-induced disruptions is warranted, analog to the supply chain domain (Kaufmann et al., 2018). Moreover, “there is more to managing projects than managing just the temporary” (Sydow, 2021, p. 3). Consistently, another respondent pointed out that projects are executed over longer periods and include complex milestones in practice: “I would have liked to have been able to express my thoughts that it is the project manager's responsibility to get relevant sign-offs much earlier […]”. This quote points to two limitations that also inspire future research. First, it emphasizes the need to continue the recent interest in project managers' responsibilities (Zwikael et al., 2019). Second, it motivates extending our single-period study with multi-period research on projects as has been published on the timing of breaches in supply chain contexts (Eckerd et al., 2013). Finally, we encourage studies that extend our approach by including ambiguity and complexity of project disruption causes. Specifically, our study required the disruption causes to be orthogonal in our experimental design, but a project can fail for a combination of reasons, often connected in a complex causal chain. Researchers have emphasized again that theory-building in OM should consider configurations of several causal factors to uncover more fine-grained theoretical insights (Ketchen et al., 2021).

Figures

Figure 1

Attributional process

Figure 2

Conceptual model

Figure 3

Interaction effect of environmental uncertainty and attribution style

Figure 4

Johnson–Neyman plot for the H3 interaction

Table 1

Causal attribution of performance shortfalls

Cause	Locus	Stability	Self-controllability	Other-controllability
Environmental uncertainty	External	Unstable	Uncontrollable	Uncontrollable
Non-collaborative sponsor actions	External	Unstable	Uncontrollable	Controllable

Table 2

Causal attributions – behavioral responses links

Outcome	Essential causal attribution dimensions	Responses
Success	Locus: internal	Pride
Success	Locus: external, other-controllability: controllable	Gratitude
Failure	Stability: stable	Hopelessness
Failure	Stability: unstable	Hope
Failure	Locus: internal, self-controllability: controllable	Guilt and regret
Failure	Locus: external, other-controllability: controllable	Anger
Failure	Other-controllability: uncontrollable	Sympathy

Note(s): Adapted from Weiner (2018)

Table 3

Regression results

Control variables	Project manager motivation
	Control model		Model 1		Model 2
	Coeff.	SE	Coeff.	SE	Coeff.	SE
Age	0.000	(0.008)	0.001	(0.008)	0.001	(0.008)
Experience	–0.001	(0.008)	–0.002	(0.007)	–0.002	(0.007)
Experience with projects	0.128	(0.061)*	0.155	(0.058)**	0.155	(0.058)**
Gender (1 = female)	0.153	(0.098)	0.089	(0.095)	0.092	(0.095)
Industry (dummy)
- Production	0.005	(0.131)	–0.017	(0.125)	–0.045	(0.126)
- Service	–0.021	(0.114)	–0.033	(0.109)	–0.076	(0.110)
- Othera	–	–	–	–	–	–
Position (dummy)
- Senior employee	0.516	(0.218)*	0.429	(0.210)*	0.401	(0.210)
- Employee	0.448	(0.212)*	0.394	(0.203)	0.353	(0.204)
- Othera	–	–	–	–	––	–
Region (dummy)
- Europe	–0.210	(0.574)	–0.539	(0.554)	–0.692	(0.557)
- North America	–0.075	(0.582)	–0.407	(0.561)	–0.565	(0.565)
- South America	–0.790	(0.730)	−1.142	(0.703)	−1.212	(0.703)
- Oceaniaa	–	–	–	–	–	–
Perceived locus	–0.023	(0.080)	–0.066	(0.077)	–0.051	(0.077)
Perceived controllability	0.175	(0.069)*	0.174	(0.066)**	0.163	(0.066)*
Perceived stability	–0.068	(0.060)	–0.027	(0.058)	–0.014	(0.059)
Independent variables
Environmental uncertainty (H1)			0.245	(0.087)**	−1.196	(0.644)
Non-collaborative sponsor (H2)			–0.396	(0.090)**	–0.098	(0.623)
Moderation
Attribution style (AS)					–0.222	(0.208)
AS * Env. uncertainty (H3)					0.493	(0.218)*
AS * Non-collab. sponsor (H4)					–0.104	(0.211)
R2	0.090		0.170		0.185
Delta R2	–		0.080		0.015
F statistic	2.137*		3.848**		3.561**

Note(s): ^*p ≤ 0.05, ^**p ≤ 0.01; coefficients are unstandardized; SE: standard error; ^a linear combination

Note

1. In principle, the locus of the cause also determines who can control a cause, if anyone (self or other). However, the original definitions and measures of controllability were biased towards assessing self-controllability, hence this later extension.

Appendices

Supplementary materials related to this article can be found online.