Enterprise System Renewal - The Divergence Between Perception and Reality

E-commerce based companies critically rely on the effective use of the information system used to support their processes. Accordingly, managers place a great emphasis on the success of projects to introduce such systems. However, research increasingly suggests that project success may not be as objective as one would assume or hope. Quite contrary, as our work will show, project success is often constructed by the stakeholders involved in the project. Extending prior research, we investigate how different groups of stakeholders construct their own perception of project success, how these different perceptions influence each other, and how these perceptions compare to more objective measures of project success. Through our work, we provide management with insights into threats to a reliable project management approach for critical IS projects and identify a few major drivers that need to be accounted for in order to make sure that such critical projects really are successful.

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