University IT Project: Fear of Failure and Project Outcomes

This project delves into the significant impact of the fear of project failure on outcomes within the IT industry, examining whether leveraging stress, a common practice, leads to success or failure. The research explores the evolution of the global business landscape, emphasizing the growth and complexity of IT projects and the resulting pressures and stress on employees. It investigates the root causes of IT project failures, the role of negative emotions, and the definition and consequences of stress in the workplace. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, including quantitative and qualitative data analysis, to assess demographic characteristics, work experience, and the correlation between fear, stress, and project outcomes. The findings, presented through statistical analyses and qualitative insights, discuss the relationship between stress, fear, and project success, offering conclusions, limitations, and suggestions for future research in this critical area of IT project management.

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Impacts of Fear of Project Failure on Project Outcomes: Does Leveraging Stress lead to
IT Project Success or Failure
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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Abstract
The global business and commercial scenario, over the years, have developed considerably
and have also undergone huge dynamics and in the recent period, international phenomena of
utmost importance, like that of Globalisation, trade liberalisation as well as technological and
infrastructural innovations have cumulatively led to the creation of a more integrated,
inclusive and interconnected global marketplace. The Information Technology have been
growing impressively and expansively, which in turn has led to increase complexities and
dynamics in the projects and activities in these industries. This in turn, has resulted in
workplace burdens, pressures and also considerable amount of stress among the employees,
especially the ones associated with the projects of the concerned industries.

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Table of Contents
Abstract......................................................................................................................................ii
Index of Tables........................................................................................................................vii
Index of Figures......................................................................................................................viii
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................1
Introduction............................................................................................................................1
Research Background.............................................................................................................2
Significance of the Research..................................................................................................4
Research Problem...................................................................................................................5
Research Aim.........................................................................................................................5
Research Objectives...............................................................................................................6
Research Questions................................................................................................................6
1.8 Research Hypotheses.......................................................................................................7
Structure of the Dissertation...................................................................................................8
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.......................................................................................10
2.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................10
2.2 Project Failures: Meaning and Definition......................................................................11
2.2.1 Project Failure.............................................................................................................11

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2.2.2 Project Failures in the Information Technology Industry...........................................12
2.3 Types of project failures in the IT industry....................................................................12
2.4 Causes of Growth of the IT industry..............................................................................13
2.5 Causes of failure of projects: Case Study of the IT industry.........................................15
2.5.1 Failure of projects in general...................................................................................15
2.5.2 Causes of project failures in the IT industry...........................................................17
2.6 Negative Emotions in Workplaces.................................................................................20
2.6.1 Types of negative emotions in workplaces in general............................................22
2.7 Negative Emotions over Project Failure........................................................................23
2.8 Impacts of fear of project failure on project outcomes..................................................25
2.9 Stress: Definition and Meaning......................................................................................27
2.9.1 Consequences of Stress in human lives..................................................................27
2.9.2 Stress in Workplace.................................................................................................28
2.10 Effects of stress in Project Management......................................................................28
2.10.1 Leveraging stress to increase productivity............................................................30
2.11 Stress in Information Technology Industry..................................................................30
2.12 Literature Gap..............................................................................................................31
2.13 Conceptual Framework................................................................................................32
Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY...........................................................................34

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3.0 Introduction....................................................................................................................34
3.1 Research Proposition......................................................................................................34
3.2 Research Framework......................................................................................................34
3.3 Research Philosophy......................................................................................................35
3.4 Research Design.............................................................................................................36
3.5 Research Approach........................................................................................................37
3.6 Research Hypotheses.....................................................................................................39
3.7 Data Types, Collection and Analysis.............................................................................39
3.7.1 Data Type................................................................................................................39
3.7.2 Data Collection Methods.........................................................................................40
3.7.3 Sample Selection and Sample Size.........................................................................41
3.7.4 Data Analysis..........................................................................................................42
3.8 Ethical Consideration.....................................................................................................43
3.9 Research Limitations......................................................................................................44
Chapter 4: DATA ANALYSIS................................................................................................46
4.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................46
4.2 Quantitative Data Analysis............................................................................................46
4.2.1 Demographic Characteristics of the selected respondents......................................47
4.2.2 Work experience and project handling experience of the respondents...................49

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4.4.5 Correlation Analysis................................................................................................63
4.4.6 Regression Analysis................................................................................................65
4.5 Qualitative analysis........................................................................................................67
Chapter 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION....................................................................71
5.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................71
5.2 Discussion......................................................................................................................71
Chapter 6: Conclusion..............................................................................................................74
6.1 Limitation.......................................................................................................................76
6.2 Suggestion......................................................................................................................77
6.3 Future research...............................................................................................................81
References................................................................................................................................83
Appendix..................................................................................................................................93
Survey Questionnaire...........................................................................................................93
Interview Transcript.............................................................................................................95
Interview 1:..............................................................................................................................95
Interview 2:..............................................................................................................................96

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Index of Tables
Table 1: Types of project failures (Especially in the IT industries).........................................13
Table 2: You have succeeded in most of your projects.............................................52
Table 3: Negative emotions are common in managing projects..............................54
Table 4: You often experience the fear of failure of projects you handle..............55
Table 5: You feel high level of stress in handling the projects................................57
Table 6: Fear of failure motivates you to work harder......................................................58
Table 7: Fear of failure hampers the outcome of your projects.......................................59
Table 8: High level of stress leads to higher productivity.................................................61
Table 9: High stress hampers the outcome of the projects handled by you.................62
Table 10: Correlation Analysis of the different study variables..............................................64
Table 11: Regression Analysis.................................................................................................66
Table 12: ANOVA Table.........................................................................................................66
Table 13: Coefficients..............................................................................................................66

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Index of Figures
Figure 1: Increase in the revenue generation in global IT industry (2005-2017) in billion euro
(Statista.com 2018)....................................................................................................................3
Figure 2: Structure of the Dissertation.......................................................................................8
Figure 3: Common reasons behind failure of projects and their relative weightage...............15
Figure 4: Reasons behind software project failures across the globe as per the developers
(2015).......................................................................................................................................19
Figure 5: Six types of emptions in general in work (Affective Events Theory)......................21
Figure 6: Negative emotions associated with project failures in generalised framework........24
Figure 7: Yerkes-Dodson Curve for stress and performance...................................................29
Figure 8: Conceptual Framework for the concerned research.................................................32
Figure 9: Research Onion.........................................................................................................35
Figure 10: Types of Philosophies in Research.........................................................................36
Figure 11: Types of Research Designs.....................................................................................37
Figure 12: Types of Research Approaches..............................................................................38
Figure 13: Data types used in research....................................................................................39
Figure 14: Age distribution of the selected respondents..........................................................47
Figure 15: Gender distribution of the selected respondents.....................................................48
Figure 16: Work experience of the respondents in their current workplace............................49

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Figure 17: Current involvements of the respondents in IT projects.........................................50
Figure 18: Experience of the respondents in handling IT projects..........................................51
Figure 19: Level of success in IT projects...............................................................................53
Figure 20: Perceptions regarding the presence of negative emptions in managing projects...55
Figure 21: Responses regarding the presence of fear of project failure...................................56
Figure 22: Perceptions of the respondents regarding the feeling of high level of stress.........57
Figure 23: Perceptions of the respondents regarding impacts of fear on motivation...............59
Figure 24: Perceptions regarding the impact of fear of failure on project outcomes...............60
Figure 25: Perceptions regarding the role of high stress in increasing productivity................61
Figure 26: Perceptions of the respondents regarding impact of stress on project outcomes. . .63

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION
Introduction
The global business and commercial scenario, over the years, have developed
considerably and have also undergone huge dynamics and in the recent period, international
phenomena of utmost importance, like that of Globalisation, trade liberalisation as well as
technological and infrastructural innovations have cumulatively led to the creation of a more
integrated, inclusive and interconnected global marketplace. This in turn has led more and
more businesses to expand their domain of operations considerably, both in terms of
expansion in new geographical regions other than their origin, as well as in terms of
exploring new markets and customers (Pflügler, C., Wiesche, M. and Krcmar, H., 2016).
The development of the economies, across the globe, has also led to a shift, in
general, from the agricultural sector to industrial and service sectors, which in turn, has led to
development of businesses in these types of industries across the globe. With this sectorial
shift, the Information Technology Industry has also flourished massively, over the last few
decades. The industry, specifically concentrating on storing, transmitting, retrieving and
manipulating information and data, help in the operations and growth of many other
industries and businesses. Thus, with the development of complex and dynamic business
frameworks in all types of industries, the projects in the IT industries are also becoming more
extensive, massive and huge both in monetary terms as well as in terms of magnitude,
dimensions and implications (Gold, B. and Vassell, C., 2015).
The projects in the IT industry, getting extensively multidimensional and complicated
in nature, as well as carrying immense implications for the companies, managing these
projects have become an aspect of extremely crucial part of the operations of the IT

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companies and the people bestowed with the responsibilities to manage these projects can be
seen to be experiencing stress and burden at an alarming rate (Taherdoost, H. and
Keshavarzsaleh, A., 2015). There also exist considerable tension and fear among the relevant
personnel, regarding the failure of the projects as the same have immense negative aftermath,
affecting the companies as well as the associated employees. Often the IT companies, use
stress as an option to increase the efforts and efficiencies of the employees, which in turn, can
also have considerable impacts on the employees themselves as well as on the projects which
they are associated with (Giardino, C., Wang, X. and Abrahamsson, P., 2014).
Keeping the above discussion into consideration, the concerned research tries to analyse
the different aspects which lead to project failure, specifically in the IT industries,
specifically emphasizing on the impacts which the fear of the officials, regarding the failure
of the projects, on the outcomes of the same. The research paper also tries to analyse whether
the common practice of leveraging stress as a tool to increase employee outputs, production
and efficiency leads to success or failure of the projects in the concerned industry, thereby
examining the relationship between emotions and stress on employee performance and
project outcomes in the IT industries (Dodson, L.L., Sterling, S. and Bennett, J.K., 2012).
Research Background
As discussed in the above section, the IT industry, across the globe, has been expanding
immensely, over the decades, both in terms of business revenue generation as well as in terms
of the areas where they venture and their domain of operations. The expansion of the industry
and the businesses in the same, can be seen from the following figure: