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The continuity of underperforming ICT projects in the public sector
journal contribution
posted on 2015-03-24, 11:49 authored by M.S. Sandeep, M.N. RavishankarThere is a growing body of research on the successes and failures of information and communications technology (ICT) projects in the public sector. However, this literature has rarely addressed the question of why some projects persist and continue despite functioning poorly in several areas. In this paper, we suggest that the notions of institutional logics and status differences provide useful insights into the structure and trajectory of this type of continuity. We build our arguments through an in-depth qualitative case study of a public information and communications technology (PICT) project in India. From our findings, we develop a process model of PICT project continuity. We explain how the employment of bureaucratic posturing – a manifestation of bureaucratic logic – as a tactic by high status groups could lead to poor performance on several fronts. The paper elaborates on two levels of continuity: policy-level continuity, which in our case was enabled by the logics of decentralization and technocracy, and operational-level continuity, which was achieved when groups with contrasting status-related motivations supported the project.
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Published in
INFORMATION & MANAGEMENTVolume
51Issue
6Pages
700 - 711 (12)Citation
SANDEEP, M.S. and RAVISHANKAR, M.N., 2014. The continuity of underperforming ICT projects in the public sector. Information and Management, 51 (6), pp. 700 - 711.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2014Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Information and Management and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.06.002ISSN
0378-7206Publisher version
Language
- en