Abstract
Although the total or partial failure of Information Technology (IT) projects are well documented such failures are not entirely technical in nature (Donohue et al, 2001). Project failures are often caused by lack of attention to social factors. (2002) identified ethical issues whilst (1999) and (2002) point to human factors, which in essence are the norms and culture of the implementation environment. On the. influence of culture on project success, (2003) noted that, the cultural problems are much bigger than the technical ones, adding: “The biggest hurdle is making people realise that information needs to be shared. It is only with this ethos of sharing information that take-up of technologies will be hastened.” Consequently, research and debate about IT implementation is likely to continue until the development process is under better control (Nolan 1999). This state of constant evaluation is crucial because aborted IT projects are still common place. According to (1998), 31% of all corporate technology development projects resulted in cancellation. Although in broad terms, there seems to be ample evidence of the influence of non-technical factors on project failure the dynamics of how this happens is not widely discussed. There are some pointers to the dynamics of the process in literature.
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Gyampoh-Vidogah, R., Moreton, R. (2006). The Role of Change Agents in Technology Adoption Process. In: Nilsson, A.G., Gustas, R., Wojtkowski, W., Wojtkowski, W.G., Wrycza, S., Zupančič, J. (eds) Advances in Information Systems Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36402-5_43
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