The process of social alignment and misalignment within a complex IT project

Abstract

Project management is more efficient and effective when project stakeholders are socially aligned on what the project objectives are and how they should be achieved. This outcome occurs because social alignment reduces the friction among stakeholders each time a project management decision is made. Yet, how social alignment develops or dissolves over time in a complex project is unknown.This research develops a dynamic model of social alignment and misalignment, and it identifies some of the project controls that appear to affect their development. Drawing on interview and observational data from 17 respondents involved in a complex health-IT project over a two-year period, we show that social alignment and misalignment involve eight stages -separation, disrespect, lack of cross-discipline participation and social misalignment through to learning, respect, crossdiscipline participation and ultimately, social alignment. The research has implications for how researchers theorize social alignment in complex projects and how practitioners can facilitate its development. This is the last version of the paper submitted prior to its acceptance and publication. It is provided in open access in accordance with Australian Research Council policy. for reviewing our research and providing developmental comments: the ICIS 2017 track chairs, CecilChua, Julia Kotlarsky, and Gwanhoo Lee; the journal editor and reviewers; and Neal Ashkanasy. We would also like to thank Michelle Smidt for her assistance collecting the research data, and the participants at the case sites for their time, insights, and support. The Processes of Social Alignment and Misalignment within a Complex IT Projectproviding researchers and practitioners with a finer-grained and more complete perspective on social alignment, social misalignment, and how they evolve, than available in the literature to date.The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section discusses the literature that we drew upon to examine social alignment and project controls. We then detail our research methods.Next, we present our findings along with a model of social alignment and misalignment, which we derived from our findings. Finally, we close the paper with a discussion of our research findings, implications of our findings for theory and practice, and a conclusion.

Adversarial factors in multi-stakeholders’ engagement of global-IT projects

“…Frustration can prevail when one gets annoyed with something they desire goes out of control (Bonghez, 2015). Frustration can be because when even something comes against their way (Sarigianni et al, 2017) or they are not being heard in projects (Gilchrist et al, 2018). Frustrations are evident in global projects IJMPB 450 14,2 (Morley et al, 2015) that can be influenced by the cross-cultural communications ( Jain and Suman, 2018;Glinow et al, 2004), the lack of virtual communication capabilities and a sense of social isolation that can develop mental strain and distress (Sarigianni et al, 2017;Noll et al, 2010).…”

Project governance and portfolio management in government digitalization

“…There is also a need for capability and willingness to govern also the higher-level social, economic and political elements such as processes and organization structures towards citizen and service centric transformation, as proposed for example in the classical NPM models (Cordella and Bonina, 2012). Instead of relying on governance through the traditional organizational silos, the focus should change toward governing the more effective citizen or entrepreneur service processesbearing in mind of course the administrative restrictions or substance contextualities, such as in the defense sector, for example (Gilchrist et al, 2018). To synthesize the findings of this particular research, the following policy implications on governance and PMM on different organizational levels are proposed in Table IV. Besides the addressed research scope limitations, this research has several more limitations to discuss.…”

“…Third, a longitudinal participation or observation researchsimultaneously, by multiple cross-disciplinary researchers, if possiblethrough different cases (organizations, projects) would validate (Maguire et al, 2004;Wijen and Ansari, 2007), an interesting research topic would be to study the performance and activities of the central actor as the active agent or "institutional entrepreneur hero" (Micelotta et al, 2017) of institutional change: digitalization. Finally, studying the processes of transitioning from strategic alignment to social alignment (Gilchrist et al, 2018) and forming and building a consensus of the national digitalization strategy (Bowman and Ambrosini, 1997;Floyd and Wooldridge, 1992;OECD, 2014) could also provide valuable insight into the topic.…”

Fostering Trust and Commitment in Complex Project Networks through Dedicated Investment in Partnership Management

“…The partnership commitment needed to sustain a complex global project is built on mutual trust. Partnership commitment is defined as a firm's willingness to invest in financial, physical, or relationship-based assets to strengthen or sustain a partnership based on the belief that the partnership is worth maintaining [15,19]. Commitment-based partnerships deliver unique economic benefits compared to transaction-based partnerships [20,21]; however, they cannot be achieved without sacrifice by all partners to create and sustain the commitment.…”

“…Complex projects can benefit by developing mutual trust among partners as a basis for strong, resilient partnerships [39]. Trust fosters alignment, which supports shared understanding and sparks the commitment-driven alliance which complex projects require [19,29]. These characteristics have been identified as important in a variety of contexts, including public-private partnerships (PPP), which are often characterised by conflict and uncertainty [29]; large, complex IT projects [19]; and large construction projects [1].…”