Understanding Information System Failures from the Complexity Perspective

This article is based on an intensive case study, the implementation of a computerized reservation system (CRS) in a transport organization, and adopts a non-essentialist stance to analyze its failure aspects. Providing a rich description of micro-level, organizational,and macro-level events and techno-economic networks enabled us to depart from managerialist and technologist accounts of the failure. The analysis draws on constructivism and the sociology of technology, more specifically actor-network theory and the notions of symmetry and translation. An effort is made to combine elements of both the global and the local in identifying a series of translations occurring in the case study. To complement actor-network theory, a critical analysis is also necessary to examine how power relationships are creating disadvantage and can further explain failure.