Intentional misrepresentations of project information: a state-of-the-art review

The intentional misrepresentation of project information can lead to project failure while also exposing practitioners and stakeholders to significant legal risks. This has driven scholarly interest in examining the existing research on the topic. However, effectively generating and applying knowledge from this body of work remains challenging due to a lack of clarity regarding its overall structure. To address this, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of research on intentional misrepresentation published in peer-reviewed journals between 1991 and 2024. Our analysis explored key structural elements, including publication trends over time, dissemination channels, frequently cited papers, common and co-occurring keywords, and the interconnections among relevant studies. We identified five dominant themes in the literature: ‘Bias and strategic misrepresentation’, ‘Self-committed errors, silence, and whistleblowing’, ‘Theoretical applications’, ‘Organizational impact of intentional misrepresentations’, and ‘Information asymmetry and distortion’. This study makes two key contributions. First, it consolidates and synthesizes existing knowledge, offering a comprehensive structural characterization of the field in a single study. Second, it extends previous bibliometric analyses and literature reviews, which have primarily focused on broader corrupt and fraudulent practices in engineering and construction.