Influence of Project Partnering on Stakeholder Role Ambiguity and Project Manager Risk Perception in Information System Projects

Project partnering is an efficient management intervention for enhancing software project performance. Empirical studies have shown that project partnering can effectively reduce role ambiguity during project development; however, these studies focused only on user-related problems. We conducted a matched triplet questionnaire survey of 102 software project managers, users, and developers to examine how project partnering enhances project performance via the risk perception and role ambiguity of certain key stakeholders. Results demonstrate that project partnering affects managers’ risk perception and certain key stakeholders’ role ambiguity, which in turn influences project performance. The findings provide new insight into the impact of risk perception and role ambiguity on project management.