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Doomed to Failure: Narratives of Inevitability and Conspiracy in a Failed IS Project

Andrew D. Brown

Matthew R. Jones

Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Episodes of failure provide an interesting arena for the observation of alternative interpretations of organizational events. The social psychology literature suggests that individuals tend to attribute failure to external forces and that this may be due to selective perception, which may be motivated by the preservation of self-esteem and/or image enhancement. This paper discusses the differing narratives describing the failure of an information system in a UK hospital. It is suggested that these narratives may be seen as attributing failure to either the occurrence of particular events, or to the deliberate actions of specific groups or individuals. These are characterized as narratives of inevitability and conspiracy. Some possible reasons for the promotion of these alternative narratives are discussed.

Key Words: narrative • attributional egotism • National Health Service (NHS) • information systems • retrospective sense making

Organization Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, 73-88 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/017084069801900104
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