Complexities of Large-Scale Technology Project Failure: A Forensic Analysis of the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority

"Being stuck in traffic doesn't have to be a way of life." This prologue comes from the Elevated Transportation Company (ETC) board's letter in the ETC Seattle Popular Monorail Plan, one of the largest public works projects ever proposed in the city of Seattle. Three years after this proposal, on November 8, 2005, the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) was shut down by voters. This paper critically analyzes the SMP through the lens of stakeholder theory. This perspective provides valuable insights into the failure of the SMP. We theorize that SMP's failure might have been avoided had its leadership recognized the many stakeholders that had power over the plan and, more important, the dynamic changes in relationships among the stakeholders. Failure might also have been avoided by managing conflicts in stakeholders' expectations. Specifically, we use stakeholder theory to develop four propositions that are relevant in the context of large-scale technology projects: (a) Organizations are more likely to succeed when they have effective mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating interactions among stakeholders and changes in their positions in relation to their strategic innovation projects; (b) organizations are more likely to succeed when they trade off the conflicts in expectations and interests that stakeholders hold; (c) organizations are more likely to implement complex technology projects if they understand stakeholders' expectations and the interplay among stakeholders; (d) organizations are more likely to achieve their innovative projects when they define stakeholders in terms of their power over strategic objectives. The paper makes a contribution to both the research and the practice of major technological infrastructure projects, strategic innovations, and government technology management.