Escalating commitment to information system projects: findings from two simulated experiments

Commitment to an information system (IS) development project is essential for system success. However, some projects exhibit escalation of commitment, i.e. allocation of additional resources to a failing course of action. This paper describes two simulated longitudinal experiments examining the effects of project, psychological, social, and structural factors during four stages of an IS project. The results support escalation in IS projects. Moreover, project factors and psychological factors, but not structural factors, seem to aid escalation. Project, psychological, and social factors also have different effects during various stages.     

When a growth mindset can backfire and cause escalation of commitment to a troubled information technology project

This research focuses on information technology (IT) project managers' growth mindset concerning IT project management (PM) ability and investigates how such a mindset can promote escalation of commitment to a troubled IT project. Specifically, we suggest that the growth mindset of IT PM ability promotes prospective achievement motivation and can lead IT project managers to escalate their commitment to an IT project despite negative feedback suggesting that the project may not be completed successfully. Through a series of three experiments with 351 IT project managers, we obtained consistent support for our hypotheses suggesting that the growth mindset of IT PM ability promotes IT project escalation and this effect is partially mediated by anticipated regret about project failure and anticipated likelihood of project success. In addition, in the three experiments we found that when the project involves an unfamiliar technology the indirect effect of the growth mindset of IT PM ability through anticipated likelihood of project success is stronger than when the project involves a familiar technology.     

Information systems project escalation: a reinterpretation based on options theory

Escalation of commitment is a well-known phenomenon whereby individuals and organizations continue to invest in what appear to be losing courses of action. Traditional theories of escalation implicitly assume the phenomenon is dysfunctional and results from flawed, or irrational, decision-making. Some have argued, however, that the phenomenon results from equivocal information concerning a particular course of action and does not necessarily represent a flawed or irrational decision process. To shed light on this distinction, we examine prior theories of escalation and introduce a reinterpretation of the phenomenon based on options theory.To provide a context for our discussion, we examine information systems (IS) project escalation. While escalation is a general phenomenon, IS investments represent a particularly appealing context of study for several reasons. First, investments in information technology represent a significant and growing fraction of total capital expenditures for most organizations. Second, IS projects exhibit certain characteristics which create ambiguity and may cause them to be especially susceptible to escalation.Our analysis suggests that traditional theories of escalation behavior give an incomplete picture because they do not provide a mechanism for distinguishing warranted from unwarranted escalation. Thus, traditional theories provide little explanation for those situations in which escalation behavior is economically prudent. Failure to consider the value of real options means that the perceived benefits of a project are lower than the actual benefits, meaning that managers are apt to reject or prematurely cancel projects that would in fact be economically beneficial to pursue.This paper applies options theory to show that some projects that might otherwise be viewed as cases of unwarranted escalation, actually involve situations in which escalation is warranted. The options theory perspective offers new theoretical insights that challenge the traditional assumptions and yet complement existing theories regarding escalation behavior.     

User commitment and collaboration: Motivational antecedents and project performance

ContextPrior research into the success of information system development projects views user commitment and collaboration as unrelated concepts in models that take either a perspective of mediators or one of processes. This perspective is limiting in that mediators and processes may interact during the course of an information system development project.ObjectiveIn this work, we model both mediators and processes as important to project outcomes and propose that processes will also be impacted by affective mediators, specifically the behavioral mediator of user commitment and the project process of collaboration. The model also allows behavioral antecedents to be considered in relation to the mediation variable, specifically the ability of the users and the extrinsic motivators perceived by the users.MethodA questionnaire containing constructs of collaboration processes, user commitment, abilities, and extrinsic motivation are completed by users in a development project and project success is measured by the IS staff for a matching independent variable. 128 matching pairs were collected and the model analyzed using partial least squares regression.ResultsResults indicate that the affective mediator can be influenced by the tested antecedents showing that IS project managers should be able to choose users with essential abilities and also establish sufficient rewards to employees, even those who may not be direct subordinates. Similarly, collaboration is still important to the success of a project, indicating that procedures to encourage collaboration be installed from the beginning of the project. However, commitment alone is sufficient to predict collaboration, meaning that motivation outside the processes in place may not be necessary to encourage collaboration between the users and IS staff.ConclusionIS researchers should consider both process mediators and affective states in future work when considering the link between antecedent inputs of software projects to the success of outputs. IS managers should promote commitment among users beyond placing collaboration mechanisms in place. This might require project managers have more decision authority in the rewards provided to user participants.     

A Logical Analysis of the Relationship between Commitment and Obligation

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between commitment and obligation from a logical viewpoint. The principle of commitment implying obligation is proven in a specific logic of action preference which is a generalization of Meyer's dynamic deontic logic. In the proposed formalism, an agent's commitment to goals is considered as a special kind of action which can change one's deontic preference andone's obligation to take some action is based on the preference and the effects of the action. In this logic, it is shown that an agent has the obligation to take any action which is necessary for achieving as many committed goals as possible. The semantics of our logic is based on the possible world models for the dynamic logic of actions. A binary preference relation between possible worlds is associated with the model. Then the preference between actions are determined by comparing that of their consequences. According to the semantics, while the preference will influence the agent's choice of action, commitment is a kind of action that will change the agent's preference. Thus we can show how obligations arise from commitments via updating of deontic preference. The integrated semantics make it possible to express and reason about the mutual relationship among these mental attitudes in a common logic. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

一种基于社会承诺的Agent组织模型OMSC

多Agent领域所面临的一个重大的挑战是解决开放异质的多Agent系统中自治Agent间的协调问题。多Agent为了协调它们之间的活动,需要进行交互。社会承诺作为一种通信和交互机制,为自治的多Agent提供了一种协调的途径。然而,仅靠交互难以实现多Agent间的协调。Agent组织作为一种协调模型可以有效地控制多Agent间的交互与合作。论文将社会承诺和Agent组织两种协调机制相结合,提出一种基于社会承诺的Agent组织模型OMSC,分析了Agent如何用社会承诺进行推理以及基于社会承诺的多Agent系统并给出了一个实例,为多Agent间的协调提供了一种新的方法。     

Electronic communication systems effects on the success of construction projects in United Arab Emirates

This research investigates the use of modern electronic communication management systems, and how these systems affect the success of construction projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The research starts with a literature survey, and a brief background on how the communication mechanism works; how using these systems influence relationships amongst the project stakeholders, and consequently the projects success. Two case studies are introduced, followed by an analysis of results and conclusions.The first case study, based on action research, employs interactive tools to collect the evidence, including interviews, surveys, document review, and feedback on progress. The study uses success criteria from construction projects in the UAE, previously identified by the authors. This case study has revealed an organisational transformation trend, from functional, towards matrix and project structures. These types of change are taking place after the implementation of project electronic communication management systems into the client organisation, and are enhancing chances of project success.The second case study takes into consideration the co-existence of the new modern project electronic communication systems with the other traditional communication media. It has been shown that such an arrangement works both for the strategic benefit of the projects, and the projects stakeholders.In the areas of improvements to schedule and project control, the current research results are in agreement with pertinent published literature and research findings. However, the benefits for quality control during the design and construction phases of the project, in addition to potential improvements in the health safety and environment (HSE), remain debatable.     

Predicting guild commitment in World of Warcraft with the investment model of commitment

Many MMORPG offer players the possibility to become a member of a guild, a hierarchical organization of characters with common objectives. Guild membership can be beneficial to game progress, and offer opportunities for social interaction. In the current study we focus on the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), with the main aim to examine whether guild commitment and players’ intention to remain in their guild can be predicted by players’ satisfaction, investments, and perceptions of alternatives to their guild. To this end, 165 WoW players completed an online questionnaire and answered questions related to their guild membership. They also completed the investment model scale which was reworded so all questions pertained to their guild and their fellow guild members. Results show that satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size significantly predict commitment level (p’s < .001), which in turn predicted likelihood of participants’ staying with their current guild (p < .001) and the number of guilds they had been a member of in the past (p < .001). Moreover, high levels of guild commitment were indicative of better mental health, whereas weekly hours of game play was negatively related to mental health. In the discussion, we conclude that interdependence theory and the investment model of commitment are applicable to online gaming environments, and we argue that commitment to one’s guild is one factor that could prevent the risks associated with online game play (i.e. problematic use).     

Understanding affective commitment in social virtual worlds: The role of cultural tightness

Understanding how cultural differences affect the formation of users’ affective commitment (ACO) to social virtual world (SVW) services is a critical but understudied issue. Using a novel, norm-based cultural approach, we introduce cultural tightness (CT) to capture cultural differences in users’ collective environment and postulate a model that investigates the contingent effects of CT on the relationships between ACO and its drivers. A two-level analysis of survey data gathered from 400 field users of an influential SVW service and secondary data of CT reveals that the effects of satisfaction, calculative commitment, and subjective norm on ACO are contingent on CT.     

Survival analysis on the duration of open source projects

ContextOpen source (FLOSS) project survivability is an important piece of information for many open source stakeholders. Coordinators of open source projects would like to know the chances for the survival of the projects they coordinate. Companies are also interested in knowing how viable a project is in order to either participate or invest in it, and volunteers want to contribute to vivid projects.ObjectiveThe purpose of this article is the application of survival analysis techniques for estimating the future development of a FLOSS project.MethodIn order to apply such approach, duration data regarding FLOSS projects from the FLOSSMETRICS (This work was partially supported by the European Community’s Sixth Framework Program under the Contract FP6-033982) database were collected. Such database contains metadata for thousands of FLOSS projects, derived from various forges. Subsequently, survival analysis methods were employed to predict the survivability of the projects, i.e. their probability of continuation in the future, by examining their duration, combined with other project characteristics such as their application domain and number of committers.ResultsIt was shown how probability of termination or continuation may be calculated and how a prediction model may be built to upraise project future. In addition, the benefit of adding more committers to FLOSS projects was quantified.ConclusionAnalysis results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed framework for assessing the survival probability of a FLOSS project.     

The influence of ethnicity on organizational commitment and merit pay of IT workers: the role of leader support

Projections of looming shortages in the supply of skilled IT workers, along with high employee replacement costs, make employee attraction, retention and support a pressing concern for organizations. One potential remedy for these shortages is to focus more attention on historically underrepresented groups. We explore ways organizations can support ethnic minority IT professionals to enhance their career success. Integrating affective, cognitive and social perspectives through affective events theory and social exchange theory, our objective is to explore the implications of ethnic minority status for the relationship between leader support (i.e., mentoring and leader–member exchange (LMX)) and subjective and objective indicators of career success (i.e., organizational commitment and merit pay) among IT workers. To test the model, we conducted a field study of 289 IT workers in a Fortune 500 company. Our results showed that LMX influenced organizational commitment for ethnic minorities, while career mentoring and LMX influenced organizational commitment for majorities. Psychosocial mentoring influenced merit pay for ethnic minorities, while neither LMX nor mentoring influenced merit pay for majorities. Our study contributes to the literature on IT personnel issues by exploring how and why these leader support mechanisms enhance organizational commitment and merit pay for IT workers. Moreover, we demonstrate that ethnicity is an important consideration for researchers studying organizational commitment, merit pay, mentoring and LMX. Our findings suggest that managers can boost organizational commitment among IT workers by focusing on LMX and career mentoring. Moreover, they may want to place particular emphasis on psychosocial mentoring and interventions to enhance LMX for their ethnic minority IT workers.     

New receipt-free voting scheme using double-trapdoor commitment

It is considered to be the most suitable solution for large scale elections to design an electronic voting scheme using blind signatures and anonymous channels. Based on this framework, Okamoto first proposed a receipt-free voting scheme [30] for large scale elections. However, in the following paper, Okamoto [31] proved that the scheme [30] was not receipt-free and presented two improved schemes. One scheme requires the help of the parameter registration committee and the other needs a stronger physical assumption of the voting booth. In this paper, we utilize the double-trapdoor commitment to propose a new receipt-free voting scheme based on blind signatures for large scale elections. Neither the parameter registration committee nor the voting booth is required in our scheme. We also present a more efficient zero-knowledge proof for secret permutation. Therefore, our scheme is much more efficient than Okamoto’s schemes [30] and [31] with the weaker physical assumptions. Moreover, we prove that our scheme can achieve the desired security properties.     

A generic model for semantics-based versioning in projects

Large projects generally involve a number of phases and evolve over a period of time. Several revisions of the individual artifacts consisting of the project take place during the various phases. These revisions and refinements are normally captured as different versions using configuration/version management tools. But the semantics of these refinements with respect to the project are not captured by existing mechanisms. In addition to the above, a change in the semantics of a project artifact may require suitable changes in other related artifacts. Existing mechanisms for configuration management do not provide mechanisms for change propagation based on the change semantics. In this paper, we propose a generic model for semantics-based version management in projects, which can be built over existing tools. The model also provides support for capturing how changes propagate in a project. We then elucidate the generality of the model by applying it to a project involving a CAD framework and a software development project     

Software process improvement with weak management support: an analysis of the dynamics of intra-organizational alliances in IS change initiatives

Software Process Improvement (SPI) projects are large-scale, complex organization-wide change initiatives. They require considerable investments in personnel, time and money and impact just about every aspect of software firms. The group charged with conducting an SPI project has, however, little formal authority to influence or force software professionals to engage in SPI work or to define and implement changes. The SPI literature suggests that successful SPI initiatives depend on strong commitment from top management. But what should the SPI group do if management support is weak? In this paper, we present an analysis of how an SPI group can use alliances to obtain influence and succeed when management support is weak. Our study is based on a 3-year longitudinal field study of SPI change initiatives at Denmark Electronics. Our findings show that a lack of top management support is not necessarily incompatible with success. This research opens an important new area of research on intra-organizational alliances and information system (IS) implementation. It has the potential to offer new theories and practical advice on how IS implementation projects can be more effectively managed.     

Stochastic unit commitment problem

The electric power industry is undergoing restructuring and deregulation. We need to incorporate the uncertainty of electric power demand or power generators into the unit commitment problem. The unit commitment problem is to determine the schedule of power generating units and the generating level of each unit. The objective is to minimize the operational cost which is given by the sum of the fuel cost and the start‐up cost. In this paper we propose a new algorithm for the stochastic unit commitment problem which is based on column generation approach. The algorithm continues adding schedules from the dual solution of the restricted linear master program until the algorithm cannot generate new schedules. The schedule generation problem is solved by the calculation of dynamic programming on the scenario tree.     

An efficient non-interactive deniable authentication scheme based on trapdoor commitment schemes

Deniable authentication scheme is one of useful tools for secure communications. The scheme allows a sender to prove the authenticity of a message to a specified receiver without permitting the receiver to prove that the message was authenticated by the sender. Non-interactive schemes are more attractive than interactive schemes in terms of communication overhead, and thus several non-interactive deniable authentication scheme have been proposed. In this paper, we propose an efficient non-interactive deniable authentication scheme based on trapdoor commitment scheme. We construct an efficient trapdoor commitment scheme which provides very efficient commitment evaluation operation. Then we design an efficient non-interactive deniable authentication scheme by using the trapdoor commitment scheme. We also prove the security of our scheme under firmly formalized security model.     

序优化理论在大规模机组组合求解中的应用

序优化理论以满足工程实际需要为目的,能够简化优化问题复杂程度,节省大量计算时间,保证以足够高的概率求得足够好的解.文中将煤耗费用、机组启动成本、购电费用、SO_2排放费用作为目标函数,考虑了带时间耦合关系的系统运行约束、机组特性约束、一次能源约束,建立了考虑火电、水电、核电、生物质、燃气多种类型电源的96时段机组组合动态优化模型,并引入序优化理论予以求解.最后,分别对10~100机24时段标准火电测试系统和128机96时段某省级实际电力系统进行算例仿真,并与其他优化算法的求解结果进行了详细的对比分析,进一步验证了采用序优化理论解决电力系统大规模机组组合问题的可行性和实用性.     

政府数字化转型下浙江智慧水利设想

当前浙江省正在推进政府数字化转型工作,智慧水利是水利数字化转型的重要抓手,设想从顶层设计、行动计划、指标体系3个方面展开,提出夯实数字化基础、优化网络化覆盖、提升智能化水平、实现智慧化管理的指导思想;设计基础设施、数据资源、应用支撑、业务系统四层总体框架,以及"双中台、一门户"的技术框架;谋划6项工程、29个项目、100项工作内容;构建7个一级指标、22个二级指标、89个三级指标及126个四级指标,共计244个评价指标的水利信息化发展指标体系。该设想对智慧水利谋划设计工作进行有益探索,具有一定的借鉴意义。     

Understanding commitment and apathy in is security extra-role behavior from a person-organization fit perspective

This study presents an empirical investigation of employees’ extra-role behaviour in the information security context based on person – organisation fit theory. The perspective of fit evaluates the differences and similarities between information security policy makers and practitioners to provide employees with an approach to decide whether and how to participate in the implementation of extra security actions. We developed a research model and then conducted a survey and PLS-SEM analysis to test the corresponding hypothesis. The results illustrate that perceived demand – ability fit, perceived need – supply fit, and perceived value fit are effective in motivating security commitment. The empirical evidence shows that security commitment is a partial mediator between complementary fits (demand-ability fit and need-supply fit) and participation intention and is a full mediator between supplementary fit (value fit) and participation intention. In addition, apathy reduces motivation to engage in extra-role behaviour, while value fit and security commitment eliminate such apathy.     

一种安全的比特承诺方案

在分析了文献[1]中给出的基于伪随机数的比特承诺方案的基础上，讨论了针对该承诺方案的一种中间篡改攻击方式，并对原方案进行了改进．在保持原方案安全性的基础上，改进后的比特承诺方案引入了单向Hash变换，通过认证机制确保数据在传输过程中免遭这种中间篡改攻击．