Why IT-Projects Fail: A Meta-Analysis of the Construct ‘Escalating Commitment’ in Information Systems Research

Escalating commitment refers to situations where decision makers tend to persist with failing courses
of action by committing themselves more and more to the course of action as they invest further resources even
when they face substantial negative feedback (Brockner, 1992; Newman & Sabherwal, 1996). This article
examines the phenomenon of escalating commitment in the domain of information systems by i) systematically
conducting a literature review where 23 triggers for escalating commitment in IS were identified. The results of
the literature review yield that the main research in this field clearly focuses on studying the phenomenon in the
context of it-projects but also on the upcoming research field of online services such as online-auctions. On the
other hand ii) we conducted a meta-analysis with the aim of quantifying the power of the phenomenon under
discussion based on the literature identified in the first part of our study. The computed overall effect size turned
out to be significantly different from zero, but had to be put under reservation after testing the population for
homogeneity.