Commitment to an information systems (IS) development project is widely believed to affect the eventual success of the system. Problems arising from low commitment have also been described. However, there has been little research on the factors that influence the level of commitment to an IS project. This paper provides some initial insights into the determinants of commitment based on a longitudinal study of an IS project that was stopped and then restarted on several occasions over a 17-year period (1975-1992). The paper draws four types of determinants - project, psychological, social, and structural - from the organization behavior literature and uses them to explain six decisions that were made during the 17-year period. A comparison of these six decisions suggests that project determinants play a central role during the initial commitment decision, but the other determinants assume greater importance in later stages. Moreover, it seems that in this case study, project and psychological determinants affected the decision to increase commitment, whereas social and structural determinants influenced the decision to withdraw commitment to the project Some implications for practice and future research are examined.
The development of an information system is a social process involving users and systems analysts, carried out in an organizational setting. This paper presents a process model of user-analyst relationships to guide research into the social dynamics of system development. The model identifies antecedent conditions, encounters, episodes, and outcomes over the course of a project. The model asserts that established relationships between analysts and users will persist unless critical encounters change the trajectory of the project. By conceiving of systems development as a series of encounters and episodes, researchers may identify critical encounters and study the connections between preceding events and their consequences. Practitioners may use the model to diagnose problems and to enact critical encounters that move a project in a different direction. The descriptive and predictive capacities of the process model are illustrated with two case studies.
User involvement is recommended to analysts as a technique of successful system development, but as a process it is little understood. This case study compares four process models of user involvement-learning, conflict, political and garbage-can-with each other and with an empirical example of system development. Different models are seen as appropriate to explaining the nature of user involvement in different stages of development and contexts. Structural conditions and issues of power are shown to be decisive in the development of conflict and conflict resolution. A two-stage model of user involvement based on Robey and Farrow's work (1982) is proposed which distinguishes conflict development from conflict resolution.