Building high quality working relationships between information systems specialists and business clients: The impacts of IS role, tactics and institutional context

The failures of Information Systems (IS) projects still abound in spite of improvements in technologies and system development methodologies. IS failures are often attributed not to technology, per se, but to non-technical issues such as inappropriate behaviors of IS specialists and poor IS-client relationships. Yet to date, little is known about the conditions under which good and bad IS-client relationships develop in the organizational setting.; Using the case research strategy, this dissertation study assessed the impacts of individual and organizational-level conditions on the quality of IS-client working relationships. Specifically, the study examined intensively eight relationships developed during six IS implementation projects in three financial service companies.; The findings, based on the analysis of the IS-client interviews, project/company documentation, and background surveys of IS specialists, provided the foundation for a framework of the conditions under which relationships of high and low quality occur. The framework suggests that the role orientations of IS specialists, the relationship building tactics of the IS-client pairs, and the organizational context within which working relationships evolve influence the relationship quality. High quality working relationships occur when IS specialists adopt the role of a collaborator, when IS-client tactics contribute to mutual expectations, trust and influence, and when the organizational context promotes IS behaviors leading to excellent relationships.; The study's findings have important implications for practice and research. First, IS practitioners should retroactively re-examine their own roles and behaviors during IS projects in order to improve their performance and relationships with clients in the long run. Secondly, IS practitioners and their clients should use the tactics suggested in this study to develop mutual expectations, build trust, and evolve influence as they work together on the interdependent tasks. Thirdly, IS managers should provide the proper organizational infrastructure to induce and facilitate high quality IS-client relationships. Finally, the research implications of this study point to the need for more longitudinal research on the process by which lateral relationship evolve and the need to further test, refine and extend the proposed framework of IS-client working relationships.