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Cargo Cults in Information Systems Development: A Definition and an Analytical Framework

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Advances in Information Systems Development

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation ((LNISO,volume 34))

Abstract

Organizations today adopt agile information systems development methods (ISDM), but many do not succeed with the adoption process and in achieving desired results. Systems developers sometimes fail in efficient use of ISDM, often due to a lack of understanding the fundamental intentions of the chosen method. In many cases organizations simply imitate the behavior of others without really understanding why. This conceptual paper defines this phenomenon as an ISDM cargo cult behavior and proposes an analytical framework to identify such situations. The concept of cargo cults originally comes from the field of social anthropology and has been used to explain irrational, ritualistic imitation of certain behavior. By defining and introducing the concept in the field of information systems development we provide a potential diagnostic tool to improve the understanding of one of the reasons why ISDM adoption sometimes fail.

A prior version of this paper has been published in the ISD2018 Proceedings (http://aisel.aisnet.org/isd2014/proceedings2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, CERIS, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Tanja Elina Mäki-Runsas, Kai Wistrand & Fredrik Karlsson

Authors
  1. Tanja Elina Mäki-Runsas
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  2. Kai Wistrand
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  3. Fredrik Karlsson
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Correspondence to Tanja Elina Mäki-Runsas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Bo Andersson

  2. School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Björn Johansson

  3. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Chris Barry

  4. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Michael Lang

  5. Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Henry Linger

  6. Information Systems Department, IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain

    Christoph Schneider

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Mäki-Runsas, T.E., Wistrand, K., Karlsson, F. (2019). Cargo Cults in Information Systems Development: A Definition and an Analytical Framework. In: Andersson, B., Johansson, B., Barry, C., Lang, M., Linger, H., Schneider, C. (eds) Advances in Information Systems Development. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22993-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22993-1_3

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