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Seven Ways
to get Your Favoured IT Project Accepted – Politics in IT Evaluation, (pp
31-40)
Egon Berghout1, Menno Nijland2 and Kevin Grant3
1Centre of IT
Economics Research (CITER), University of Groningen, The Netherlands
2M&I/Partners,
Amersfoort, The Netherlands
3Glasgow Caledonian University, Caledonian Business School, Scotland,
e.w.berghout@eco.rug.nl
Nijland@mxi.nl
kevin.grant@gcal.ac.uk |
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Abstract:
IS
managers are being put under increasing pressure to justify the value of
corporate IT/IS expenditure. Their constant quest for the ‘holy grail’
continues, as existing methods and approaches of justifying IT/IS
expenditure are still failing to deliver. The decision making process is
not as objective and transparent as it is claimed or intended to be.
This paper discusses seven commonly used tactics used by business
managers to influence IT appraisals. The paper takes a ‘devil’s
advocate’ position and adopts some irony when looking at the area of
power and politics in IT evaluation. Rather than promoting the use of
these techniques, this article aims to raise awareness that IT
evaluation is not as rational as most IT evaluation
researchers/practitioners would want it to be or indeed claim it to be.
It is argued that rationalisation or counter tactics may counteract
influence techniques in an attempt to get behind the cloak and dagger
side of organisational power and politics, but politics and power in
decision-making cannot and should not be filtered out. Due to
dissimilarities of objectives, limitations of time and information,
influence techniques will always be used. However, rather than being
counterproductive, these techniques are essential in the process of
decision making of IT projects. They help organisations reach better
decisions, which receive more commitment than decisions that were forced
to comply with strictly rational approaches. Awareness of the influence
and manipulation techniques used in practice will help to deal with
power and politics in IT evaluation and thereby come to better IT
investment decisions.
Keywords: IT
Evaluation, IT Decision Making, IT Assessment, Information Economics,
Decision Making, Organisational Power & Politics. Information
Management. |
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