Information Systems Project Abandonment: A Case of Political Influence by the Stakeholders

Abstract

This paper serves as a stimulus to investigators to examine the role organizational politicsploys in decisions leading to the abandonment of information systems (IS) projects. While prior researchhas identified IS development of IS projects as a highly political process, where stakeholders may bemore concerned about furthering their self-interests than about contributing to the overall success of theproject, there has been little research on identifying the political factors contributing to IS projectabandonment. Our case demonstrates six types of political action that took place that caused an electroniccommerce (e-commerce) proJect to be abandoned. Finally, when analyzing mistakes and their principalcauses, there is one important lesson that we should learn. That is, all organizations make mistakesand there is the potentia/for learning from project abandonment experiences.