Abstract
AbstractInformation systems development (ISD) has been part of the core of information systems for over 40 years. Throughout its history, the issue of risk has been closely related to ISD projects, and significant efforts have been made by researchers and practitioners to improve their quality. While important headway has been made in assessing and resolving ISD risk, the literature shows that new and salient risks emerge outside the scope of extant risk management regimes. As a consequence, organizations still struggle with leveraging new technology as projects continue to fail at almost the same rate, albeit for different reasons. Understood as the distinction between reality and possibility, risk is inherently intertwined with practice and rooted in the knowledge, goals, power, and values of specific actors in particular contexts. Hence, to understand how risks emerge, we present a longitudinal case study in which we trace the origin and locus of risks in contemporary ISD practices. We draw on these insights to theorize information technology risk as increasingly interstitial, originating from sources positioned in between established practices and therefore outside the scope of conventional risk analyses. In conclusion, we discuss interstitial risks as an important form of emergent risk with implications for both research and practice.
Highlights
Since its advent, information technology (IT) has had a fundamental impact on the conditions for organizing (Orlikowski & Robey, 1991; Tilson, Lyytinen, & Sørensen, 2010) and become a key operational and strategic issueInfo Systems J. 2019;29:97–118.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/isj ÖBRAND ET AL.for contemporary organizations
We present a longitudinal case study of the development, support, and sales of an increasingly integrated IT services at information systems development (ISD)‐org, a global consultancy firm, to investigate the following research question: How do risks emerge in the development of complex information technology services? To uncover the origin and locus of IT risk emergence, we focus on the everyday practices of ISD professionals and the structural conditions at ISD‐org over a 10‐year period
We describe how risks were implicated in the development of the studied information infrastructure service at ISD‐org over a 10‐year period
Summary
Information technology (IT) has had a fundamental impact on the conditions for organizing (Orlikowski & Robey, 1991; Tilson, Lyytinen, & Sørensen, 2010) and become a key operational and strategic issueInfo Systems J. 2019;29:97–118.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/isj ÖBRAND ET AL.for contemporary organizations. Substantial efforts, in both research and practice, have been made to improve the ways in which IT is developed, implemented, and appropriated to achieve better results. These efforts have not had the desired effect (Conboy, 2010; Lim, Sia, & Yeow, 2011). A study conducted by KPMG in 2013 found that only 35% of IT projects consistently delivered according to stated requirements, 33% delivered on budget, and 29% on time. In 2017, KPMG reported increased failure rates, with only 29% of projects delivering to budget and 20% of them delivering on their planned benefits. There is a variation in the perception and role of risk across industries (Kim, Mithas, & Kimbrough, 2017), and for ISD organizations, identifying and managing risk seems to present a key challenge (Narayanaswamy, Grover, & Henry, 2013)
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