Escalation Of Commitment In MIS Projects: A Meta-Analysis

Escalation of commitment emerged as a major explanation for the propensity of management information systems projects to exceed time and budget constraints. Earlier studies demonstrated that escalation in MIS is a common event.  This study presents a meta-analysis of the various theories of escalation that allows for integration of the various escalation factors into a model of irrational escalation and a model of rational escalation. The implications of rational and irrational escalation for the decision making in management of information systems are discussed

Prediction of IS Project Escalation Based on Software Development Risk Management

Information system project failure is described as a common phenomenon. Escalation occurs when there are continued commitments for a troubled project and has been observed as one pattern of failure. The main purpose of this research was to investigate whether software development risks were the factors to discriminate between escalated projects and non-escalated projects. Thirty critical risks were selected and classified into nine risk categories under three dimensions such as product, people, and process. Probability and loss in each nine risk category were measured on the basis of 247 survey cases from IS professionals. The results show that the risk probability in the people dimension and the process dimension with management aspects was more important to predict escalation than the risk loss in those dimensions and the risk impact in the product dimension with technical aspects. The results imply that managerial factors are more critical than technical factors in predicting IS development project escalation. Additionally, it was noticed that the CMM level of an organisation was very significant to predict successful projects.Information system development project, risk, project escalation