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An Ethnographic Study of IS Investment Appraisal

An Ethnographic Study of IS Investment Appraisal

Debra Howcroft, Robert McDonald
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 19
ISBN13: 9781605661421|ISBN10: 1605661422|ISBN13 Softcover: 9781616924843|EISBN13: 9781605661438
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-142-1.ch019
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MLA

Howcroft, Debra, and Robert McDonald. "An Ethnographic Study of IS Investment Appraisal." Cross-Disciplinary Advances in Human Computer Interaction: User Modeling, Social Computing, and Adaptive Interfaces, edited by Panayiotis Zaphiris and Chee Siang Ang, IGI Global, 2009, pp. 300-318. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-142-1.ch019

APA

Howcroft, D. & McDonald, R. (2009). An Ethnographic Study of IS Investment Appraisal. In P. Zaphiris & C. Ang (Eds.), Cross-Disciplinary Advances in Human Computer Interaction: User Modeling, Social Computing, and Adaptive Interfaces (pp. 300-318). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-142-1.ch019

Chicago

Howcroft, Debra, and Robert McDonald. "An Ethnographic Study of IS Investment Appraisal." In Cross-Disciplinary Advances in Human Computer Interaction: User Modeling, Social Computing, and Adaptive Interfaces, edited by Panayiotis Zaphiris and Chee Siang Ang, 300-318. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2009. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-142-1.ch019

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Abstract

Both academics and practitioners have invested considerably in the information systems evaluation arena, yet rewards remain elusive. The aim of this chapter is to provide rich insights into some particular political and social aspects of evaluation processes. An ethnographic study of a large international financial institution is used to compare the experience of observed practice with the rhetoric of company policy, and also to contrast these observations with the process of IS evaluation as portrayed within the literature. Our study shows that despite increasing acknowledgement within the IS evaluation literature of the limitations and flaws of the positivist approach, typified by quantitative, ‘objective’ assessments, this shift in focus towards understanding social and organisational issues has had little impact on organisational practice. In addition, our observations within the research site reveal that the veneer of rationality offered by formalised evaluation processes merely obscures issues of power and politics that are enmeshed within these processes.

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