How User and Requirement Risks Moderate the Effects of Formal and Informal Controls on IT Project Performance

Controlling information technology (IT) projects is a prime concern for both project managers (PMs) and users, yet little is known about how key risks affect the relationship between controls and performance. Based on data collected on 128 completed IT projects, we examine the moderating effects of requirement and user risk on the relationship between controls and process performance from the perspectives of both the project manager and the user liaison. Both risks were found to suppress the relationship between controls and process performance for each group. While both formal and informal control explain a significant amount of variance in process performance, formal control had a more significant role than informal control from the PM perspective, whereas informal controls play a more significant role than formal controls from the user perspective. The relationship between formal control and process performance was found to be stronger for PMs than for users

Control Perception Differences in IS Offshoring Projects: Conceptualization and Empirical Test of Performance Impact

This paper takes a novel approach to IS project control by studying control perceptions of clients and vendors in IS offshoring projects and the implications of their perceptions for project performance. We present the results of a survey-based analysis of 46 client-vendor dyads involved in IS offshoring projects. A major contribution of this study lies in operationalizing and empirically testing attempted control (control perceived by the client) and realized control (control perceived by the vendor). Based on prior research, we employ a relational governance view to test whether control perception differences decrease IS project performance. Building on transaction cost economics, we then develop and test the rival perspective that control perception differences may improve performance. Our data support the view that perception differences can be beneficial for IS offshoring project performance

Controls for Managing Risks Across Different Stages of ERP Projects

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations can be highly risky, posing numerous challenges to companies that implement them. Prior research has mainly focussed on identifying and assessing risks in ERP projects. Still little is known on mitigating risks by means of managerial control. Thus, this ongoing research aims to address these gaps by exploring how organisations exercise control in regards to identified risks during different stages of an ERP project. By using a case study approach this study particularly seeks to answer if and why control choices for risks change across different project stages. The preliminary results indicate that there is support for both, the need to collate the learnt experiences of ERP participants for these risks and their relative controls to be evaluated at all stages of the ERP project as the importance of risks and controls differ for each phase of the implementation project

Power Distance in Information Systems Offshoring Projects - A Control Theory Perspective

Controlling IS offshoring projects is a great challenge because of the inherent uncertainty of such projects. In such settings, informal controls are assumed to become increasingly effective. However, still little is known about the factors that influence the effectiveness of informal controls. We argue that the vendor manager’s power distance orientation—a key cultural construct that reflects beliefs about status, authority, and power in organizations—represents a missing antecedent of informal control effectiveness. Analyzing data from 57 client-vendor matched pairs, we found that high power distance on the part of the vendor manager negatively impacts project performance but at the same time positively moderates the relationship between self-control and performance

Control and Performance in IS Projects: A Meta-Analysis of Hierarchical and Market-based Control Relationships

Literature on IS project control distinguishes between hierarchical and market-based control relationships. Prior studies typically investigate one of these two forms of control relationships in isolation. Hence, little is known about the differences between hierarchical and market-based control relationships. Responding to this gap, we analyze how the effects of control modes on IS project performance differ in hierarchical compared with market-based control relationships. Specifically, we conduct a meta-analysis to compare the effects of control modes on IS project performance reported in research on hierarchical and market-based control relationships. The results suggest that the effects of behavior and self-control on performance differ between these two forms of control relationships. Based on our results, we derive implications for complementary and substitutive effects between control modes, and for interrelations among hierarchical and market-based control relationships

How Environmental Uncertainty Moderates the Effect of Relative Advantage and Perceived Credibility on the Adoption of Mobile Health Services by Chinese Organizations in the Big Data Era

Despite the importance of adoption of mobile health services by an organization on the diffusion of mobile technology in the big data era, it has received minimal attention in literature. This study investigates how relative advantage and perceived credibility affect an organization's adoption of mobile health services, as well as how environmental uncertainty changes the relationship of relative advantage and perceived credibility with adoption. A research model that integrates relative advantage, perceived credibility, environmental uncertainty, and an organization's intention to use mobile health service is developed. Quantitative data are collected from senior managers and information systems managers in 320 Chinese healthcare organizations. The empirical findings show that while relative advantage and perceived credibility both have positive effects on an organization's intention to use mobile health services, relative advantage plays a more important role than perceived credibility. Moreover, environmental uncertainty positively moderates the effect of relative advantage on an organization's adoption of mobile health services. Thus, mobile health services in environments characterized with high levels of uncertainty are more likely to be adopted because of relative advantage than in environments with low levels of uncertainty

Examining Organizational Implications of Innovations in Software Development: Agile and Simulation

Software development is a complex process involving stakeholders with divergent perspectives, skills, and responsibilities who must work together to create a software product of high quality. Problems such as miscommunications and misunderstandings among project stakeholders, especially between the IS and business functions, exist in software development. To help address these issues, innovative methods are being increasingly adopted such as the Agile software development methodology and software simulation. These two methods share the same goal of bringing stakeholders together to establish a common understanding so that the system can be built quicker and better than with traditional approaches. This dissertation, which consists of two essays, focuses on these two innovative methods of software development – Agile methodology and software simulation – and examines how they can be best applied and under what conditions they lead to positive outcomes. The first essay studies the introduction of the Agile methodology in a company steeped in the traditional Waterfall software development method. The essay reports on how the Agile methodology was integrated with the traditional software development process including an in-depth analysis of the organizational and project controller-controlee relationships before and after the Agile methodology implementation. We find that outcome control, which was the predominant control mechanism, used in the company’s Waterfall development process, gave way to a hybrid control mechanism that possesses attributes of emergent control while maintaining vestiges of some Waterfall-like outcome control mechanisms. In addition, we find that the IS function must relinquish some influence over software development resources with the introduction of the Agile method. Lessons learned from this case study point to the complexity of designing organizational and project control mechanisms during the transition from the Waterfall to an Agile approach.As much as innovations in software development methods improve the software creation process, the risk of failing to create a quality software product are heightened when requirements are misinterpreted. Recent innovations in requirements simulations provide stakeholders with an opportunity to see realistic simulations of the system before it is built to quickly reach a common understanding of the requirements. Hence, the second essay empirically examines how the use of software simulations with various degrees of realism can help mitigate project requirements risk including project novelty, data interdependence, system interdependence, requirements instability, and requirements diversity, leading to higher software product quality. Results suggest that simulation realism partially mediates the relationship between project requirement risk and software product quality indicating the importance of investing in highly realistic simulations in software project requirement risk mitigation.Overall, this dissertation sheds light on how software development managers can employ innovative methods such as an Agile method and software simulation to bring greater stakeholders unity and produce higher quality software products