1.        Introduction

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 what they were intended to deliver and the decision making process is not as objective and transparent as it is claimed or intended to be. This can be attributed to the following reasons; benefits are difficult to assess, measure and manage; costs are high and difficult to predict; large uncertainties and major risk are involved; communication problems and stakeholder politics (Renkema, 2000). It is anticipated that this paper may contribute to managers’ attempts to make sense of power and politics that occurs when evaluating IT investments  (Weick, 1995). Sense making is a way to make explicit what is implicit during the IT evaluation process, as sense making seeks to structure the unknown by placing stimuli into some kind of frame of reference, which allows one to “comprehend, understand, explain, attribute, extrapolate and predict" (Starbuck and Milliken, 1988).

The concept of power and politics has been a central theme of study in academia for many years. Within the social sciences, political science and organisational behaviour disciplines it has been widely discussed and reported. Over the years there has been a growing interest and discussion within the IS community to help explain and explore the subjective nature of information systems and how they are integrated and used within organisations.

With the growing recognition of the social and political nature of systems development (Keen, 1981; Markus and Bjorn-Anderson, 1984; Knights and Murray, 1991) and IT evaluation (Hirschheim and Smithson, 1988; 1998), the concept of power is playing a growing and prominent part in IS research. Awareness is growing among researchers that the scientific rational view of evaluation has to be expanded. Perhaps being replaced by a perception of evaluation as a social and political phenomenon, where power is an essential element, as power has a major impact on the decision making process and on the actual decision itself. Many of the existing frameworks developed for IT evaluation identify and discuss the concepts of power and politics, yet they never fully unpack nor assist managers to see and respond to the highly complex and highly political dimensions that are embedded within the IT evaluation whole process.

Within the academic literature, there is an abundance of diverse, diffuse and available studies, including ‘n’ step guides on how to do IT Evaluation successfully. While these models and frameworks are often simple, attractive and illustrative they tend to view IT evaluation as rational and objective, with a strong technical focus, and ignore the incremental, serendipitous, and subjective nature of information systems.

Many researchers have tried to understand the nature and essence of what power may be and how it may be defined, however, no widely held consensus of these exist.

Several researchers claim that power is a ‘primitive term’ that needs to be clarified using such terms as ‘influence’, ‘authority’, ‘control’, and so on (Ryan, 1984). Power by many researchers and practitioners is clarified as the resources available to a person to make another person do something that the person would not have done otherwise. Moreover, influence techniques can be viewed as the actual use of power (Raven et al., 1998), whereas power is the potential to influence. Manipulation can be viewed as a form of influence, where the person influenced is unknowingly made to do something, which he or she not had done if he or she knew the perceived results.

Influence tactics and power tactics to influence people have been topics of research by various researchers (e.g. Raven et al., 1998; Yukl and Falbe, 1991; Kipnis, 1990). By drawing upon their work, different bases of power can be identified, on which influence tactics rely on.

Table 1: Bases of power according to French and Raven (1959)

Politics is the process by which differing interests reach accommodation. It is the accommodation of these interests that is the business of politics and the accommodations that are generated, modified or dissolved by politics, which ultimately rests on the disposition of power (Checkland, 1990). Knights and Murray argue: power can be seen to infuse all organisational relationships such that rather than being an exception or aberration from the norm, political activity is the focal process through which organisations are sustained, reproduced and transformed (Knight and Murray, 1994). Power can be understood and to some extent made sense of via four dimensions discussed by Horton (1998) when discussing the work of Lukes (1974) and Hardy et al. (1996) and their contributions of looking at power from a sociological perspective. Lukes developed three dimensions of looking and thinking about power. Hardy et al further developed the work of Lukes and added a fourth dimension (Hardy et al., 1996).

1.1         Dimension 1

Actual behaviour in making decisions i.e., concrete instances of power where one agent intentionally influences the behaviour of another one by a certain expressed behaviour (‘A gets B to do something’). Dimension 1 involves a focus on behaviour in the making of decisions on issues over which there is an observable conflict of (subjective) interests (Lukes, 1974).

1.2         Dimension 2

Dimension 1 is restricted to the making of “concrete decisions”, disregarding the so-called “non decision-making” by which potential political issues are kept covert or unvoiced. In non decision-making a decision on such an issue is never considered. Dimension 2 of power allows consideration to be given to the ways in which decisions are prevented from being taken on potential issues over which there is an observable conflict of (subjective) interests, seen as embodied in express policy references and sub political grievances (Lukes, 1974).

1.3         Dimension 3

Moving the concept of power beyond a link with conflict, that is both decision making and non decision making are concerned with issues where there are at least two parties seeking different outcomes. This dimension acknowledges the ways in which issues could be prevented from arising at all, i.e. avoiding the potential conflict altogether.

Lukes tries to give some guidance to the conceptualisation of power by distinguishing between instrumental power and symbolic power (Lukes, 1974). Instrumental power addresses dimensions one and two, and symbolic power addresses dimension 3, i.e. an unobtrusive use of power occurs in order to secure an outcome by preventing conflict.

However, this indicates that there is a direct belief that power determines choice and changes as if the intention of the powerful were directly coincident and continuous with their effects. Therefore, Hardy adds another dimension to make sense of this issue (Hardy et al.,1996).

1.4         Dimension 4

Entitled the conceptualisation of power that addresses the power of the system, i.e., where power is neither given nor received but exercised and it only exists in action (Foucault, 1980). This is more aligned to the notion of a web like structure of power within an organisation. This view lies in the unconscious acceptance of the culture and subcultures, roles, norms and values of the how the organisation does things with a combination of structural and non-structural mechanisms of the system.

Clegg (1989) builds on this Foucauldian perspective in his framework of circuits of power. The framework considers three circuits: an episodic circuit, social integration circuit and system integration circuit (Clegg, 1989). In the episodic circuit, power is manifested by agents capable of producing their intended outcomes by use of controlled resources and established alliances. The social integration circuits comprise norms, rules and meanings that give identity to particular groups, and system integration circuit consists of technical means and techniques for production (Introna, 1997). The three circuits provide a basis for understanding power as a network of relations, which can be applied to understand situated decisions and outcomes.

Rather than theorising about the concept of power in IS research, this article takes a practical and ‘on the ground’ view of how power is exercised in the process of IT evaluation. It focuses on the manifestation of power in IT evaluation and the description of political actions engaged by managers to try to influence IT decision outcomes. Recognising such actions could aid managers to assess the political issues within the organisation. However, to ensure an enriched and deeper understanding is obtained then more interpretative frameworks are needed, perhaps drawing upon and building upon the existing body of knowledge developed by academics such as Clegg, 1989, Lukes, 1974 and Hardy, 1996, who have provided frameworks to help understand why politics is exercised within situated contexts. IT evaluation is one such situated context.

2.        IT evaluation

IT evaluation can have many objectives, throughout the life cycle of an IT project (Swinkels, 1997). One important objective of IT evaluation is to facilitate an ex ante appraisal of IT investments. The value of an IT investment proposal is determined to facilitate decision making about a proposal. The discussion on IT evaluation in this article refers to this ex ante appraisal of IT investment proposals.

The traditional formal-rational ideal view on evaluation assumes that it is possible before an IT project commences, that managers and evaluators can determine the outcomes of an IT investment project proposal. Knowing the outcomes, an objective decision about whether to allow a project to go ahead can be reached. Many evaluation methods and decision aiding tools are based on this model. For example, based on a Net Present Value (NPV) technique, one can tell immediately whether to invest in a proposal (e.g. a NPV number that is higher than zero, says the investment is worthwhile). Many criticisms have been raised to this formal-rational view on evaluation and the evaluation aiding methods it employs (Weill, 1993; McKeen and Smith, 1993). Some key criticisms to formal-rational evaluation methods are:

§         They neglect the qualitative aspects of investments;

§         They favour short-term views on investments and thereby disfavour long-term infrastructure investments;

§         They neglect the establishment and discussion of risk factors in investment determination;

§         They are susceptible to manipulation, and the inappropriate scientific use and historical ways of working, rather to address and respond to the social view of evaluation (Hirschheim and Smithson, 1999).

On the bases of these criticisms new evaluation perceptions and methods for IT evaluation have been constructed. Methods have been constituted that include the intangible aspects of the investment (e.g. Parker et al, 1988); that include the notion of an investment lifecycle (Willcocks, 1996, Swinkels, 1997); that assess a portfolio of IT investment proposals (Farbey et al., 1993, Berghout, 1997); that include risk-assessment, and so on. Serafeimidis and Smithson constructed an interpretive methodology that besides the content of the method, also considered context and process of the evaluation (Serafeimidis and Smithson, 1998). However, none of these methods explicitly address the political aspects of IT evaluation.

3.        Seven influence tactics

This section details seven influence tactics that are common in the practice of IT decision making. They are presented from a ‘devil’s advocate’ perspective. The findings are based on research relating to the comparison of IT evaluation and decision making within the Benelux and Scottish financial sectors (Nijland and Berghout 2000, Stansfield et al. 2000). These seven influence tactics are by no means exhaustive, however, they show the main strategies commonly used by ‘project champions’ to get their ‘pet’ projects approved.

Table 2: A devil’s advocate perspective on IT evaluation influence tactics

3.1         Designate a project ‘strategic’

Call your project a strategic initiative, which the organisation must have, so you will not have to commit to verifiable quantitative estimates. With the recognition of recent years that IT investments can have strategic impacts for organisations, many projects have acquired a strategic status. The strategic impact is by definition hard to quantify accurately, as it deals with the future. With the argument that the benefits therefore cannot be calculated, the underpinning of the investment will be at best, be a text or narrative discussion, interpreting and describing how the investment will contribute strategically to the success and or the attainment of corporate objectives, e.g. to enhance the existing product portfolio; to develop new products; to give improved and or access to new markets (e.g. by using the Internet), etc. Estimates about what the secondary effects (e.g. increased number of customers, increased number of sales, etc.) of the investments will be absent or a wild guess. By claiming that the project is strategic, it allows the project champion to press ‘hot words or hot buttons’ in senior managers that trigger them to support the project.

3.2         Designate a project ‘must-do’ or ‘going-concern’

Argue that your project is necessary for the organisation to stay operationally efficient and effective, or argue that your project is not an investment, but rather costs for increased maintenance and system management. With investments in the Y2K and in the EURO, together with competitive forces, regulations, and governmental laws, the growth of the Internet and other information communication based technologies, many projects acquire a status of ‘must-do’. Also from a technical perspective, many legacy systems are kept operational, requiring large investments, because the business operations depend on them. One of the more common arguments is that ‘if we do not, our competitors will’, which plays on the mindset that ‘we are (or should we) the best’. Often these projects have highly technical elements, which are unfamiliar to the senior business managers. Under the guise of must-do, a more comprehensive evaluation is said to be redundant. However, even in so-called must-do projects, many alternatives exist. For example, and alternative to investing in legacy systems, a new standard solution package could be acquired to substitute the legacy systems.

3.3         Slice-up a project (the salami-technique)

Divide a bigger project into smaller projects, which stay below the organisational investment threshold for capital projects. Many organisations have a certain financial threshold, before an official IT appraisal is required. As long as the projects stay beneath this threshold, no efforts have to be put into evaluation. Another similar technique entails getting commitment for the first part of the project (salami) and then adds the other parts while the project is on its way asking for additional investments at a later point. Few organisations actually stop a project, which has already started. From this perspective, it is explainable that some projects are started without formal justification, using the argument that waiting for a formal justification would take too long and that the business would loose out if no action were taken quickly.

3.4         Be creative in your cost/benefit/risk analysis

Include only the costs that affect you, stress the benefits of the project to others and be favourable in your assumptions under which conditions your project will be a success. Despite the need and the explicit assumptions within IT evaluation methods on including all lifecycle costs, practice shows that many IT investment proposals only include the initial investment costs, leaving operational costs out. Benefits often are very positive and arise in multiple places in the organisation. Due to an uncertain future, estimates will vary and many assumptions will have to be made which usually are more evangelical than realistic in nature and focus.

3.5         Find a problem for your solution

Look for problems in your organisation that can be resolved by applying your ideas. Many technical investments are justified because they have a champion who has a strong belief in the new technology, not because there is a great organisational need for the investment. The project proposers will look for opportunities in the organisation where the new technology will fit, and build a case for that. It is however by no means certain that the new technology will actually be beneficial to the organisation, or that it is the best choice among the different alternative investments.

3.6         Claim you do not have time to make a proper proposal

In the hectic of a day’s work, people will not mind if you spend your time on keeping the business running, rather than working out investment proposals. Many people in organisations are more inclined to go for short-term goals, rather than long-term goals. If one claims that there was not enough time to make a proper proposal, due to being busy working on keeping things operational, one might get away with a minimum detailed proposal.

3.7         Retry your proposal over and over again

If you do not succeed at first, resubmit your proposal the year after. In the dynamic market of IT, people change positions and jobs frequently. Since IT evaluation can be highly subjective, it is likely that other people will like your proposal if repeated. Many organisations use an unstructured approach to IT evaluation and do not keep records of previously discarded proposals. Reconsider the title your proposal to make the tactic less obvious.

Though we do not encourage the use of these techniques to manipulate outcomes, since they could cloud the objective of IT evaluation to come to an informed IT investment decision, we acknowledge the fact that in real life these influence techniques exist and may even be very useful in terms of persuasion, participation, commitment, bargaining, voting, delegation, generating incentives, etc, on which decision making processes rely heavily on. Indeed it is a widely held believe that it is these influence techniques in fact which make the decision making process (in the case of ex ante IT evaluation) happen (Merkhofer, 1984).

4.        Counter tactics

In the political arena of IT investment evaluation, it is equally possible to deploy counter tactics against the seven previously described tactics. Managers typically employ two forms of counter tactics: one of rationalisation and one of political counter tactics. The first is aimed at reducing ambiguity by clarification of objectives, processes and information, working towards some common understanding of what is right and wrong. The second increases political behaviour in the organization, and might even create a battlefield where decision makers have to outwit or overpower their opponents by political counter tactics.

Rationalization as a counter tactic will be described first, followed by more political orientated counter tactics.

4.1         Rationalizing a decision making process

Conflicting objectives are a typical source of political behaviour in organizations. Consequently, political behaviour can be reduced when these underlying conflicts are resolved.

Daft summarizes the differences between political and rational behaviour according to eight characteristics (Daft, 1986). Depending on certainty, uniformity of goals, and tightness and centralization of control, decision-making will be rational, political, or mixed (Daft, 1986). This is illustrated in table 3.

Table 3: Organizational characteristics of rational and political decision making (Daft, 1986)

The characteristics described by Daft refer to bringing more clarity and consensus in the organisation and they all require additional time. Consequently, when you are already in favour of a decision or uncertain whether you favour the outcome of the more rational decision making process, you will be less willing to support a more rational decision making process.

Elements that need to be assessed when rationalising a decision making process are:

§         Stakeholders: who is responsible for what? Also apply an ex post evaluation of implemented projects.

§         Decision criteria: which criteria are used and how did each project score on each criteria?

§         Project descriptions: which projects are considered, what do they consist of and what should be achieved when?

§         Process: how is the entire decision making process organised?

Daft’s simplification of decision-making, though appealing to many managers, may be misleading due to the complexity that surrounds the issues and concepts of power and politics discussed earlier. Daft’s requirements to accurateness of information and consistency of all goals of all participants, it is not logical as to assume there is such a thing as rational decision-making is problematic. However, organisations that employ IT evaluation methods often do this with the aim of rationalising decisions and more ‘objective’.

4.2         Political counter tactics

Given the above problems associated with rational decision-making, managers often apply a political counter tactic to challenge non-favourable proposals. Typical examples are (based on Harrison, 1981):

§         Blaming or attacking others. Compare a proposal with similar projects that went wrong. This nicely focuses the discussion on well-known weakness of the other projects.

§         Present your own (selective) information. Finding an academic or consultant that supports your arguments should always be possible.

§         Use your previously established favourable image (credits). Do not argue, just oppose. Suggesting this should be sufficient to cancel the proposal and move to the next point on the agenda.

§         Develop your own base of support. This is preferably done before the actual meeting takes place.

§         Associate with other influential persons.

§         Create obligations. Agree with the non-favourable proposal, however, do include your, own pet project (include success in your established defeat).

Combinations of all counter tactics are being used against all seven influencing tactics.

4.3         Desirability of counter acting the influence tactics

To think that either by rationalising or politically counteracting all possible influence tactics will by definition improve IT investment decision making, is an illusion. To start with the latter, the political counteracting of the influence tactics themselves call for counter-counter tactics to be employed, thereby clouding rather than aiding the IT investment decision process. The former, fully rationalising the decision-process, might seem ideal, however it is also detrimental. Decision-making processes are characterises by political aspects. These aspects are an important reason why such decision-making processes actually work. A crucial part of decision-making is that decisions are not predetermined, but one has the freedom to reach a decision based on arguments. These arguments do not have to be solely rational; people develop creditable and plausible arguments or frames of reference from their own knowledge and experience, norms and values and their personal worldview. To reduce the freedom in decision making by restrictions reduces the participation of the decision makers who at the end of the day have to execute the decision. Moreover, politics in decision-making helps to solve differences of opinions, and thus potentially help to make compromises. It keeps the organisation stay dynamic and to avoid stasis (Keen, 1981) and is a source of new ideas, which enables radical and innovative changes to happen, i.e., changes that would not fit the format of formal decision making.

An important thing to remember is that decision making most of the time is not about zero-sum situations, but often a solution can be found to create a win-win situation for all parties involved. Such solutions can count on broader commitment, thereby significantly increasing the chance of success.

5.        Practical implications for decision makers

Influence tactics and manipulations will always form a substantial part of IT decision making. In the theoretical ideal situation, all necessary information will be available to make an informed decision and be free from personal bias, interpretation and personal gain. All alternative outcomes can be discussed and calculated to determine the most favourable investment opportunity.

However, due to the bounded rationality of decision makers only limited information will be considered during decision making (Simon, 1960). The decision makers are informed (by definition) with partial information, which has been communicated through restricted means of communication (e.g. written or spoken). The outcome of the decision primarily depends on this limited information and the way this is presented. The influence tactics can be seen in this perspective, as a means to either cope with or misuse these limitations.

The way the information is presented to the decision makers can be twofold:

§         Influencing: the information is shaped in such a fashion that the final decision matches closest to what the decision makers actually wanted. This means, that although the information was not complete, the decision makers will afterwards be satisfied with the predicted results.

§         Manipulation: the information is shaped in such a fashion that the decision makers are tricked into taking a decision, that afterwards turn out to not match their wishes.

In practice this entails discovering the boundary between influencing and manipulation. The decision maker should ask himself if the information on hand gives enough insight and trust in future outcomes to make the decision.

This article aims to contribute to the discussion about managing the politics in IT evaluation by arguing that:

§         The decision makers should be aware of the possible manipulation and influence tactics that can occur, starting with the seven described in this article;

§         Trying to eliminate politics in IT decision making by rationalisation is undesirable, since decision making is not a strict rational process, but a political process;

§         Trying to eliminate possible manipulations beforehand by employing counter tactics is regarded pointless, since counter tactics trigger more manipulations (e.g. counter-counter tactics);

§         The decision makers should reserve time to inform themselves sufficiently about the backgrounds of the investment proposal and to further explore unclear and questionable aspects via the persons responsible for the given information.

6.        Conclusions

Politics is often referred to in a negative fashion. However, given limitations of time and information and differences of interest, organisational decision-making will always include politics. Mintzberg observes the following benefits of politics (Mintzberg, 1985);

§         Politics in organisations may correct deficiencies in other more legitimate systems of influence and provide for certain necessary forms of flexibility not otherwise available. Politics can act in a Darwinian manner to bring the strongest members of the organisation into managerial decision-making roles.

§         Politics can often help to promote necessary organisational change blocked by more traditional means.

§         Politics can often facilitate the decision making process, particularly the effective implementation of choices to serve particular interests.

Politics in decision-making is inevitable. Elimination is both impossible and undesirable. Impossible, because counter tactics themselves are forms of politics. Undesirable, because they are crucial to come to decisions with commitment that keeps the organisation dynamic and flexible to respond to internal and external developments. The bounded rationality of people makes influence tactics and manipulations an integral part of IT decision making processes. Instead of fruitlessly trying to employ counter tactics, it is argued to be aware of the techniques, in which this article has elaborated on, and to inquire further into aspects where manipulation is suspected or where more information is needed to become more confident in the proposal at hand.

By unpacking and making sense of power and politics in a more interpretative manner, then perhaps the knowledge base of IT evaluation can move on from the plethora of post financial methods and techniques of Multicriteria methods; Ratio methods and Portfolio methods (Renkema and Berghout, 1997). The shift towards enriched and interpretative frameworks, which are able to help IT evaluators 'wrestle' with the complex social phenomena that exists within the decision making process is needed.

The impact of power and politics in IT evaluation is significant. However, a deeper understanding of the politics of IT evaluation in specific managerial contexts could be reached by making a complete political appraisal of the organisation aided by more interpretive IT evaluation frameworks, by utilisation and developing the work of Clegg as one suggested starting point in the journey for ‘true’ transparent IT evaluation (Clegg, 1989).

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