Do we Fully Understand Information Systems Failure? An Exploratory Study of the Cognitive Schema of IS Professionals

Knowledge about the cognitive schema of IS professionals with respect to IS failure is crucial but lacking in the IS literature. To fill this gap, we conducted an exploratory study in which 86 experienced IS professionals categorized a comprehensive set of 70 IS failure risk items into failure clusters that they ranked in the order of their expected organizational impact. These data were analyzed using the MDSORT procedure. Findings indicate that IS professionals do not treat causes and effects as separate failure constructs but rather combine a set of related causes and effect into a single IS failure rule. Through successive refinement, a stable, reliable, and parsimonious IS failure rule schema was developed that consists of six IS failure rules. We also developed specific change agent behaviors that IS professionals can enact, or expect to be enacted by relevant other IS professionals, with respect to each of the six IS failure rules to mitigate failure risk and reduce IS failure.