This study describes a conceptual framework that portrays information system project
failures as organizational crises. The main assumption of this study is that such failures
will invariably happen and thus there is a need to make them less costly and more
beneficial to organizations. To identify the behaviors and factors that influence an
organization's ability to effectively manage a project failure, this dissertation reviews the
crisis management literature. Based on this review, a three-stage model is formulated. To
understand the mechanisms underlying this model, a number of hypotheses (which are
informed by a number of related organizational behavior areas) are generated. These
hypotheses focus on three key crisis management factors: the organization's ability to
promptly detect an impeding failure, its capacity to manage the failure's impacts, and its
propensity to learn from it. To empirically assess the validity of the conceptual model,
three case studies of Canadian public organizations were conducted. The empirical
findings provide strong support to the model's conjectures and indicate that project failures
generate several crisis-related behaviors and responses. More specifically, the findings
suggest that an organization's proactive preparation for a failure can have a significant
moderating effect on its impact. However, the findings clearly show that an organization's
ability to promptly detect (and prepare for) a failure is impeded by behaviors that are
motivated by escalation of commitment. Such behaviors lead to a prolonged pre-crisis
denial period and have a suppressing effect on whistle-blowing, which is pursued as a
denial-curtailing strategy by non-management participants. The empirical findings
describe both operational and legitimacy tactics used by organizations to cope with the
aftermath of a project failure and indicate that credibility restoration is a significant
concern during large crises. Finally, the empirical evidence indicates that organizational
learning and adaptation are more likely to follow major project failures than less
significant ones. This contradicts threat-rigidity arguments and provides support to the
failure-induced learning theory.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/9886 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Iacovou, Charalambos L. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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