# Can Project Team Members’ Willingness to Disclose Past Performance During Procurement Improve Organizational Business Process Success?

**Authors:** Kenneth David Strang (Department of Business Administration, University of the Cumberlands, Williamsburg, KY, USA) — ORCID 0000-0002-4333-4399; Narasimha Rao Vajjhala (Department of Computer Science, American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) — ORCID 0000-0002-8260-2392
**Type:** Journal article (open access)
**Source:** Information, 16(11), Article 955
**Published:** 2025-11-04
**DOI:** https://doi.org/10.3390/info16110955
**Canonical page:** https://www.narasimharao.net/research/project-team-past-performance-disclosure-fintech-project-success/
**Indexing:** Scopus Q1 · Web of Science ESCI Q2 · Impact Factor 4.3 (JCR 2025)

## Summary

**Question.** Does a project team member’s willingness to disclose past performance evaluations during procurement improve team allocation and business process success — beyond established predictors such as budget, end-user community size, and certification?

**Finding.** Yes. After controlling for budget, end-user community size, and certification, team members’ willingness to share their past performance evaluations significantly improved project success, raising the explained variance in project success from 9.6% to 18.8%.

**Why it matters.** Projects still fail roughly half the time. The results suggest that transparency factors — specifically, willingness to share past performance — can outweigh traditional resource-allocation variables in predicting Fintech project outcomes, giving project sponsors and procurement teams a practical, low-cost signal to use when staffing projects.

## Key findings

1. Projects continue to fail approximately half the time, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. The study tested its hypotheses with correlation, conditioned correlation, t-tests, and OLS linear regression in a post-positivist design.
3. Controlling for budget, end-user community size, and certification, team members’ willingness to share past performance evaluations significantly improved project success.
4. Adding willingness to disclose past performance increased the explained variance in project success from 9.6% to 18.8%.
5. Transparency factors outweighed traditional resource-allocation variables in predicting Fintech project outcomes.

## Study at a glance

| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Research question | Does willingness to disclose past performance improve project and business process success? |
| Design | Post-positivist, hypothesis-testing quantitative design |
| Context | Fintech projects; team allocation during procurement |
| Methods | Correlation, conditioned correlation, t-tests, ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression |
| Controls | Budget, end-user community size, certification |
| Main result | Explained variance in project success rose from 9.6% to 18.8% when willingness to disclose past performance was added |
| Implication | Transparency is a stronger predictor of Fintech project outcomes than traditional resource allocation variables |

## Abstract

Projects continue to fail approximately half the time, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. While prior studies highlight the influence of project leadership and individual competencies, little is known about whether team members’ willingness to disclose past performance can improve team allocation decisions and enhance business process success. However, we do not know if team members’ willingness to disclose their past performance may improve teamwork allocation in projects, thereby increasing business process success while reducing the likelihood of the project failing. We applied a rigorous post-positivist research design using correlation, conditioned correlation, t-tests, and ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression to test the hypotheses. Controlling established predictors including budget, end user community size, and certification, we found that team members’ willingness to share their past performance evaluations significantly improved project success, increasing explained variance from 9.6% to 18.8%. The results indicate that transparency factors—specifically, willingness to share past performance—outweigh traditional resource allocation variables in predicting Fintech project outcomes, explaining an additional 19% of the variance in project success.

## Key terms

- **Past performance disclosure:** A team member voluntarily sharing evaluations of their performance on earlier projects when being considered for a new project team.
- **Explained variance (R²):** The share of the variation in an outcome — here, project success — that a regression model accounts for.

## Limitations

- Findings are reported for Fintech projects; generalization to other project types requires further testing.

## How to cite

Strang, K. D., & Vajjhala, N. R. (2025). Can Project Team Members’ Willingness to Disclose Past Performance During Procurement Improve Organizational Business Process Success?. Information, 16(11), 955. https://doi.org/10.3390/info16110955

```bibtex
@article{strang2025project,
  title = {Can Project Team Members’ Willingness to Disclose Past Performance During Procurement Improve Organizational Business Process Success?},
  author = {Strang, Kenneth David and Vajjhala, Narasimha Rao},
  journal = {Information},
  volume = {16},
  number = {11},
  pages = {955},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {MDPI},
  doi = {10.3390/info16110955},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/info16110955}
}
```