Theses for Project Management

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Browsing Theses for Project Management by Subject "cognitive bias"

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    The Influence of Cognitive Bias Attributes on Decision-making Style of the Project Manager: The Moderating Role of Narcissistic and Voice Behaviour
    (The British University in Dubai (BUiD), 2022-04) OBEIDAT, OMAR SALEM
    This thesis investigates the influence of cognitive bias attributes (CBA) on the decision-making (DM) style of project managers (PJM): the moderating role of narcissistic behaviour (NB) and voice behaviour (VB) in Information Technology Software Development (ITSD) projects in Dubai. The research classified sources of bias under two families: (1) perception and behavioural bias, (2) belief and probability estimation bias; these families consist of six groups that contain 21 sources of bias. The research followed a positivism philosophy using a deductive approach based on a quantitative analysis methodology and a survey instrument strategy to collect data; 381 responses were collected through an electronic survey. The study used confirmatory factor analysis to validate the constructive validity of the variables, Cronbach’s alpha to test the reliability of the variables, a pilot study conducted prior to survey distribution and multiple regression analysis through IBM SPSS statistics version 20 to test research hypotheses. The results indicated that: 1) CBA influences the decision-making style of project managers, 2) the relationship between CBA and the experiential decision-making style of the project manager is significant, whereas the rational decision-making style of the project managers is less affected by CBA, 3) using the experiential style to make a decision under uncertain events has a relatively negative influence on the success of projects as it is connected to CBA, 4) using the rational style to make a decision under uncertain events has a relatively positive influence on the success of the projects as it is less connected to CBA, 5) voice behaviour negatively moderates the relationship between cognitive bias and the decision-making style of project managers; however, the relationship was weak, and 6) NB does not moderate the relationship between CBA and the DM style. The researcher developed a de-biasing DM model which can be used to mitigate the influence of the biased decisions. The study enriched the body of knowledge of the CBA through extensively exploring various sources of bias and their impact on the DM process; and expands on the knowledge of the DM styles provided by CEST by exploring the negative influence posed by CBA. The study imparts elaborate information about the role of project managers’ NB and VB in the context of PM and provides a model that will help mitigate the risk of CBA on the decision-making process. The thesis recommends testing the group and social bias family, effect, and memory bias family in future research.
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    Influence of Cognitive Bias on Decision Making in Mega Projects
    (The British University in Dubai (BUiD), 2020-04) ALNUAIMI, WALEED
    Mega projects is an important topic in social sciences as it showcases the achievements attained by a group of people in a bid to advance the trend in a society through critical official transformation. Over the years, scholars, specialists, legislators, and the public have developed profound concern regarding mega projects exploring its characteristics and most importantly the consequences of these projects. In spite of mega projects yielding amazing outcome and benefits in the respective environments where they are executed, majority of research shows that the performance of projects is extremely below par especially in relation to expenses and time overruns which have been attributed to the features of mega projects which include complexity, wide scope, extended duration, huge funds and environmental settings that prompts increased risks to mega projects than other projects consequently increasing the rate of cost overruns. The main reasons for cost overrun have been clustered into three groups namely technical, optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Since mega projects are increasing in size and number, and their poor performance has been consistent despite various proposals suggested based on project management best practices that have mainly focused on the technical element of implementing mega projects, the performance in mega projects has not improved prompting this study to focus on optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation where if optimism is exceeded, it is termed as over optimism and leads to cost overrun due to significant underestimation of costs. The study builds on the view that cognitive biases have an influence of on cost overrun either directly or indirectly through decision making. Cost overruns are mainly influenced by decisions relating to costs and those that relate to risk. The study checked the influence of 12 cognitive biases that are controllability, availability, anchoring, conformation, cognitive dissonance, dread, familiarity, hindsight, scale, representativeness, optimism and venturesomeness on decision making (cost and risk) and cost overrun due to over optimism by developing a predetermined questionnaire using these factors and distributing it to decision makers in projects. Additionally, the influence of demographic attributes on cost overrun was also checked. 101 responses were received and analyzed through variance analysis, correlation, association analysis, and hierarchical regression. The association analysis which generated the key findings of the study indicated that work experience, controllability, dread, and cost decision making have significant influence on cost overrun due to over optimism while other factors were not significant. On the other hand, availability, anchoring, dread, and familiarity were found to significantly influence cost decision making, the other biases had no significant influence on cost decision making implying these biases have an influence on cost overrun through decision making. The hierarchical regression showed only work experience had an effect on both cost decision making and cost overrun while all other cognitive biases showed no impact indicating the presence of all biases at the same time does not have an influence on cost overrun but when considered individually which reflects high degree of the bias, controllability and dread biases have a direct influence on cost overrun due to over optimism whereas availability, anchoring, dread, and familiarity biases influence cost overrun through cost decision making in mega projects. The study proposes monitoring of all cost decisions in relation to these biases to ensure the biases do not impact on the project’s costs and hence do not influence cost overruns.