Dealing With Accountability in Project Selection

The purpose of this study is to present a framework to assess how project individuals deal with accountability in project selection. The framework is designed based on project selection and accountability literature and empirical data. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with project individuals working at organizations operating in information technology and working with information technology projects. This method was chosen since the authors considered it to be appropriate for providing a deeper understanding of social phenomena through enabling the researchers to explore the views, experiences and beliefs of motivations of project individuals on specific matters. The framework reveals that project individuals use multiple strategies to deal with accountability, depending on audience and on forms of accountability. How project individuals deal with accountabilities depends on how trust, transparency and legitimacy are embedded in the different principal-agent relationships and the context that the project individuals are involved in during the selection phase.