The effect of intervening conditions on the management of project risk

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main findings of a successfully defended doctoral thesis that studied factors or interventions causing the discrepancy between how adequate project risks should be managed and how project risks are actually managed. Design/methodology/approach – The approach involved interviews and a survey using questionnaires gathered data from project managers about their experiences with project risk management during two phases of fieldwork. The first phase included in-depth interviews with information technology (IT) project managers in order to explore patterns involving risk mediators and their influence on project risk management. A web-based survey was used in the second phase for the purpose of testing these patterns on a wider range of project managers. Findings – Specific risk-related interventions strongly influence the effective use of project risk management: project managers tended to deny, avoid, ignore risks and to delay the management of risk. Risks were perceived as discomforting, not agree