Guest editorial: Grand successes and failures in IT: Private and public sectors

Abstract

The recent abandonment of a multi-billion dollar project in the UK to computerize health records 1 provides testimony that knowledge accumulated in the MIS field has failed to impact successfully on policy and practice. The larger the scale of such IS implementations, the higher, it appears, is the risk. Implementation of organisation wide systems (for example, ERP), automated supply chain management enabled by Interorganisational systems (IOS), emerging technologies (such as Cloud computing) add further complexity both at the project and system level, thereby augmenting the risk of failure. Other recent examples of major failure in both public and private sector include: Sainsbury's failed automated logistics system, 2 the much-publicised software problems of the Toyota Prius, 3 and the UK Government's abandonment of national ID cards. 4 Technology enabled global practices (such as outsourcing) have also fundamentally changed the way that IS/IT is developed. Such practices have advantages but in themselves bring new risks, which can lead to failure, causing significant economic loss to the organisations.Such high profile failures show that, despite decades of research and the accumulation of a substantial knowledgebase within MIS (see for example, Avison and Wilson 2002;Barker and Frolick 2003;Beynon-Davies 1995;1996;Bussen and Myers 1997;Cerpa and Verner 2009;Dwivedi et al. 2013a;Fitzgerald and Russo 2005;Heeks 2002;Kappelman et al. 2006;Lyytinen and Hirschheim 1988;McMaster and Wastell 2004;Nelson 2007;Sauer 1993;Yeo 2002), further progress is required to improve the conduct of information systems initiatives. Faced with this, it is pertinent to ask why our scholarship has not been more effective. Is the fault one of theory and inadequate understanding? Or is the problem one of knowledge transfer, the failure to embed research knowledge in the working practices of managers and policy-makers. This special issue aims to move forward our understanding of the success and failure of information and communication technology-based innovation, and on the factors influencing the uptake of research knowledge in the practitioner community. The accepted papers are briefly summarised below.Janssen et al.'s article (Failure of Large Transformation Projects from the Viewpoint of Complex Adaptive Systems: Management Principles for Dealing with Project Dynamics) adopted a complex adaptive system (CAS) in order to understand better project dynamics and identify management principles for dealing with them. A case study of a large transformation project in the Netherlands was carried out, in which seven patterns were found through which project dynamics could be identified. A logical consequence of the immense complexity of the case study was that stakeholders lost sight of the overall goals, and instead focused on managing short-term Front (2015) 17:11-14 DOI 10.1007 incidents and approached the project in an ad hoc way. Informed by CAS theory, this study presented eight management principles that address the complexiti...

Evaluation of factors contributing to the failure of information systems in public universities: The case of Iran

“…hierarchical structure of criteria contributing to the failure of information systems (ISs) Lack of proper tests to evaluate the accuracy of IS projects [39,43,44,46,49-54] Poor risk management [20,34,39,42-44,49,50,52,55-61] Weak management of requirement[1,27,31,34,37,39,42,46,48,50,[52][53][54][56][57][58][59][61][62][63][64][65][66] Poor relationship between the implementation consultant and managers[1,27,28,31,34,39,42,44-51,53,54,56-59,61,66-68,70,71,73,74, …”

The changing landscape of IS project failure: an examination of the key factors

“…Studies have contributed to this topic in a number of key areas of focus in particular the assessment and measurement of IS project failure. How we judge project failure is subjective (Dwivedi et al 2013a(Dwivedi et al , 2015a but what is clear is that in instances where stakeholders cease to support a system irrespective of other factors, failure is highlight likely (Kerzner 2013, Sauer 1993. The framework set out in Figure 1 as developed in Hughes et al (2015) and extended from Sauer et al (1993), highlights the importance of stakeholder support for a system during the project period and importantly post delivery, as the full benefits are realized.…”

“…Historically, the literature has viewed project failure through the lens of specific success measures against: time, cost and quality -the so-called iron triangle (Sauer 1993). However, it is widely recognized that this approach fails to incorporate any stakeholder satisfaction criteria thereby relying solely on the technical or project management aspects of delivery (Dwivedi et al 2015a). Large-scale failures such as the French SNCF Socrate project and the London Ambulance Service Computer Aided Dispatch (LASCAD) system, highlight the catastrophic consequences of poor user engagement and failure to meet stakeholder expectations despite meeting many of the technical success measures (Beynon-Davies 1995, Fitzgerald and Russo 2005, McGrath 2002, Mitev 1996.…”

Contradictions and Interventions in Health IS

“…Despite the existing research on post-implementation issues related to HIS Kilsdonk et al 2016), there is still a lot to learn about how IS interacts with multiple, interconnected, diverse, and mutually dependent contextual elements (Benbya et al 2020), and how these interactions may cause post-implementation issues (Avgerou 2001;Dwivedi et al 2015;Williams and Pollock 2012). In this paper, we note that research has hitherto mainly focused on issues that show up in the post-implementation phase and neglects the fact that there might already be troublesome issues amongst contextual elements prior to the implementation of the new IS that have not yet manifested as problems.…”