The role of organizational control and national culture in managing information systems projects

A person's life is largely one of organizational membership. As organizational member she or he interacts with diverse individuals - be it a superior, a subordinate, or a peer. At the heart of these interactions lies the process of control. It is the function of control to regulate and adjust the actions of organizational members in a way that is consistent with organizational objectives. Without control, diverse interests and potentially unadjusted activities can severely derail the achievement of organizational goals. The fundamentality of control has long been acknowledged by organization scholars. However, organizational control is still understudied in temporary settings such as information systems (IS) projects. Research on control in the context of IS projects is critical, considering the increasing trend towards a „projectification“ of organizational life as well as the fundamentality of IS for conducting business today. Furthermore, many IS projects run drastically over budget and behind schedule, do not fulfill quality expectations, or fail altogether. Such failures often result from the inability to execute effective control. Thus, there is a strong practical rationale for examining how IS projects are controlled and how they can be controlled more effectively. This thesis contributes to this quest by analyzing two understudied phenomena: (1) the interplay between control and national culture and (2) the problem of control transmission.