The information technology project control literature has documented that clan control is often essential in complex multistakeholder projects for project success. However, instituting clan control in such conditions is challenging as people come to a project with diverse skills and backgrounds. There is often insufficient time for clan control to develop naturally. This paper investigates the question, "How can clan control be enactedin complex IT projects?" Recognizing social capital as a resource, we conceptualize a clan as a group with strong social capital (i.e., where its members have developed their structural, cognitive, and relational ties to the point that they share common values and beliefs and are committed to a set of peer norms). We theorize that the enactment of clan control is a dual process of (1) building the clan by developing its social capital dimensions (structural, cognitive, and relational ties) or reappropriating social capital from elsewhere and(2) leveraging the clan by reinforcing project-facilitating shared values, beliefs, and norms, and inhibiting those that impede the achievement of project goals. We explore how clan control was enacted in a large ITproject at a major logistics organization in which clan control was quickly instituted to avoid an impending project failure. Our research contributes to theory in three ways: (1) we reconcile the two differing views of clan control into a single framework, (2) we explain the role of controllers in enacting clan control, and (3) we clarify how formal control can be employed to develop clan control.
Internet auctions demonstrate that advances in information technologies can create more efficient venues of exchange between large numbers of traders. However, the growth of Internet auctions has been accompanied by a corresponding growth in Internet auction fraud. Much extant research on Internet auction fraud in the information systems literature is conducted at the individual level of analysis, thereby limiting its focus to the choices of individual traders or trading dyads. The criminology literature, in contrast, recognizes that social and community factors are equally important influences on the perpetration and prevention of crime. We employ social disorganization theory as a lens to explain how online auction communities address auction fraud and how those communities interact with formal authorities. We show how communities may defy, coexist, or cooperate with the formal authority of auction houses. These observations are supported by a qualitative analysis of three cases of online anticrime communities operating in different auction product categories. Our analysis extends aspects of social disorganization theory to online communities. We conclude that community-based clan control may operate in concert with authority-based formal control to manage the problem of Internet auction fraud more effectively.