Description
As long as project failure rates are high, project management research remains an important research avenue for exploration. After decades of study we may have reached the limits of understanding with our current lenses – while small projects have higher success, larger projects remain extremely vulnerable to failure (Hastie and Wojewoda, 2015). The objective of this paper is to explore a new lens for understanding project management practice: the concept of imbrications as developed in sociomaterial perspective. Re-conceptualizing IT projects as locations for building imbrications allows us to theorize about how imbrications are built during the interplay of social agencies (such as carried out in project tasks and control activities) with material agencies (the developing technology and its features). We hope this theoretical contribution to IT project management research provides richer explanatory mechanisms with which, we can understand how to achieve IT project success.
Recommended Citation
Bemgal, Sampath and Haggerty, Nicole, "Developing Imbrications: A New Lens for Understanding Project Management Practice" (2017). AMCIS 2017 Proceedings. 10.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2017/ITProjMgmt/Presentations/10
Developing Imbrications: A New Lens for Understanding Project Management Practice
As long as project failure rates are high, project management research remains an important research avenue for exploration. After decades of study we may have reached the limits of understanding with our current lenses – while small projects have higher success, larger projects remain extremely vulnerable to failure (Hastie and Wojewoda, 2015). The objective of this paper is to explore a new lens for understanding project management practice: the concept of imbrications as developed in sociomaterial perspective. Re-conceptualizing IT projects as locations for building imbrications allows us to theorize about how imbrications are built during the interplay of social agencies (such as carried out in project tasks and control activities) with material agencies (the developing technology and its features). We hope this theoretical contribution to IT project management research provides richer explanatory mechanisms with which, we can understand how to achieve IT project success.