Work More Tomorrow: Resolving Present Bias in Project Management

Explaining and Resolving Delays in Projects Project management is responsible for 30% of the world’s economic activity, with an annual value of $27 trillion. Yet, despite half a century of research and the training of millions of project managers, many projects are delivered late. This is typically attributed to Parkinson’s Law, meaning the expansion of work to fill available time. However, in “Work More Tomorrow: Resolving Present Bias in Project Management,” Shi, Hall, and Cui identify and demonstrate the alternative explanation of time-inconsistent behavior, that is, present bias. Under present bias, a decision maker values immediate costs and rewards more than future ones. The authors show that this behavioral issue is responsible for procrastination by project workers and overall project delay. Borrowing concepts from popular employee savings schemes, they develop an incentive scheme that mitigates present bias and significantly enhances project performance, as measured by on-time frequency and expected project tardiness.