Undesirable framing effects in information systems projects: Analysis of adjective usage in IS project business cases

Many information systems (IS) projects encounter significant problems. The literature suggests that decision-makers can be misled by overoptimistic estimates. We argue that such overoptimism may also be present in the choice of language in business cases. In this study, we analyzed the usage of such...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInformation & management Vol. 59; no. 3; p. 103615
Main Authors Benschop, Nick, Nuijten, Arno L.P., Hilhorst, Cokky A.R., Keil, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 01.04.2022
Subjects
Framing
IS project management
Language usage
Project documentation
IS project management
Language usage
Framing
Project documentation
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Summary:Many information systems (IS) projects encounter significant problems. The literature suggests that decision-makers can be misled by overoptimistic estimates. We argue that such overoptimism may also be present in the choice of language in business cases. In this study, we analyzed the usage of such framing in 20 business cases for large IS projects of the Dutch government. Our findings show that newly proposed systems are systematically framed using positive adjectives, whereas the existing systems are framed using negative adjectives. This pattern of framing may subconsciously bias the decision-makers toward investing in new IS projects.
ISSN:0378-7206
1872-7530
DOI:10.1016/j.im.2022.103615