’Escalation of Commitment’ as a Force for Good? Evidence from an Indonesian Digital Government Project

In extant literature, ‘escalation of commitment’ is viewed as a recommitment of resources to a failing course of action that can lock projects into an ill-fated path of failure. This view portrays all feedback information driving recommitment decisions as “negative” in nature. In this paper we question this portrayal, joining an emerging alternative view that makes no assumptions about the nature of feedback. We take the view that feedback is inherently equivocal, and regard escalation of commitment as decision dilemmas arising out of such equivocality. Drawing on a case study of a digital government project in Indonesia, the paper explores this alternative view by understanding the antecedents of escalation of commitment deployed by key actors in steering a failing project to become a reasonably successful one. Theoretically, the paper suggests that the decision maker’s dilemma is influenced by their personal beliefs, cultural norms and institutional values. The paper presents the notion of “perseverance of commitment”, where escalation of commitment emerges, and is subsequently reinforced through a collective belief-driven reframing mechanism

Synthesizing Qualitative Evidence: A Roadmap for Information Systems Research

Qualitative synthesis research is an approach that consolidates the output of different qualitative studies to create new subject knowledge. Such work can help reveal more powerful explanations than that seen in a single study, thereby generating increased levels of understanding of a given phenomenon and greater research finding generalizability. Based on a review of the literature and a survey of qualitative researchers, we found that the information systems (IS) domain lacks a clear understanding of qualitative synthesis methods and, as a result, has largely failed to take advantage of this powerful, high-potential methodological opportunity. To address this shortcoming, this paper is the first to provide a rigorous overview of the full suite of 35 qualitative synthesis methods, as well as guidelines that include a three-tiered selection framework. By using the guidelines and framework in tandem, IS researchers are able to select the qualitative synthesis method most appropriate for a given research study, particularly when the research objective involves knowledge integration/aggregation, interpretation/theory development, and/or informing IS practice

How Can We Ever Get There? - Investigations into sensemaking during extended IS projects in Indonesia: A framing perspective.

Information systems (IS) projects sometimes take a long time to complete. Particularly in the context of e-government projects in emerging countries where there is a lack of clarity as well as transparent structure and order, such projects may continue for many years. Moreover, it is not unusual for a seemingly non-performing e-government project to keep going. Running an IS project for an extended period of time requires the project team to navigate the present and future challenges. To do so, the project team need to have a sense of events and situations related to their project. The project team then can respond by taking appropriate action on what is happening (retrospectively) as well as anticipating what is yet to come (prospectively). Using qualitative methods, a longitudinal study was conducted using the interpretive approach to investigate the sensemaking process by the project team of an e-government project in Indonesia. The study focuses its investigations on two observed phenomena faced by the project team and related to sensemaking; escalation of commitment and prospective sensemaking. Escalation of commitment refers to situations where people continue with what appears to be a questionable endeavour regardless of its probability of achieving the expected outcome. On the other hand, prospective sensemaking refers to people trying to make sense of future events so they can anticipate them. Drawing from Goffman's framing theory and conceptualisation of frame alignment mechanisms, the study reveals how the project team sensemaking process includes a couple of mechanisms of frame alignment; frame transformation and frame extension. The aligned frame allows the project team to reacquire their sense of the project's situation, both recently and in the long run. This thesis seeks to make a theoretical contribution in several ways. First, the literature on the escalation of commitment by offering an alternative view of escalation phenomena as a resolution of the dilemma. Second, to the literature on sensemaking by providing empirical support for prospective sensemaking. Third, the literature on framing explaining how to frame alignment mechanism plays out as part of the sensemaking process, both retrospectively and prospectively, for an extended time; lastly, the literature on e-government by shedding more light on the social process behind e-government projects, particularly in the context of emerging countries