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Information systems (IS) project failure has been a recurring problem for decades. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the key factors that influence project failure and an analysis of the major areas that can have a significant impact on success; and second, to explore some of the key aspects that have an impact on project management performance from the practitioner perspective and discusses the problems faced by organizations in the closer integration of change and project management.

This study critically reviews the IS failure literature developing a synthesized view of the key issues and common reasons for projects to fail. The approach taken in this study is one that focuses on a number of key questions that pull together the relevant themes in this genre of research whilst highlighting many of the implications for practitioners and organizations alike.

Key questions remain on the underlying causes of instances of poor project management as an IS failure factor. The literature has omitted to develop a deeper analysis of the associations between failure factors and the potential causal relationships between these factors. The realization of project benefits relies on the success of both change and project management yet the formal integration of these two disciplines is constrained by separate standards bodies and an immature body of research.

This study is limited by its theoretical nature lacking an empirical element to provide a deeper analysis of IS failure factors and their interrelationships. This specific area is a recommendation for future research, where causal relationships between failure factors could be developed via a mathematic-based method such as interpretive structural modeling.

With failure rates of IS projects still unacceptably high after decades of attempts to significantly change outcomes, a deeper analysis of this topic is required. The research gaps and recommendations for practitioners highlighted in this study have the potential to provide valuable contributions to this topic of research.

The intent of this study is to present a new perspective of this genre of IS research that develops the main arguments and gaps in the literature from the practitioner viewpoint.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the influence of failure factors on entrepreneurial resilience in micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

To achieve this goal, a quantitative and cross-sectional study was carried out. Using a snowball sampling technique, 133 Angolan MSMEs founders responded to a questionnaire.

The results indicate that entrepreneurs attribute the failure of their activities to financial and external environmental factors such as the economic crisis and changes in the country’s laws. However, these entrepreneurs are considered resilient, as they have enough capacity to resist the national market and have a strong sense of optimism.

Based on the empirical evidence, this study shows that the failure factors of the MSMEs studied have a significant influence on some of the dimensions of entrepreneurial resilience. At the practical level, the study can be also seen as a tool to support decision making in allocating resources to improve entrepreneurial resilience in developing economies.

This study contributes to the field of research on MSMEs in an innovative way, through triangulation of the factors of business failure and entrepreneurial resilience. Furthermore, it makes some contributions to developing the theory in entrepreneurship, which has been associated with various studies about business failure.

The failure of a bridge is a complex phenomenon due to the involvement of a large number of factors. Bridge failure cannot be attributed to a single cause due to the intricacies involved in the relationship among the factors causing failure. The aim of this paper is to identify the various factors causing bridge failure and show an interdependence/relationship among them.

Interpretive structural modeling (ISM), which is a tool of structural analysis for interactive learning, has been used to develop a hierarchical structure of the phenomenon of bridge failure showing the interrelationship of the causative factors. Impact Matrix Cross Reference Multiplication Applied to a Classification (MICMAC) tool has been used to quantify and classify the factors for bridge failure on the basis of their influence and dependence.

In total, 14 factors, which may contribute to the failure of a bridge, have been identified through the literature survey and interaction with bridge experts. Even though all the 14 factors are important, the authors have found that the environmental factor has the maximum influence, while the age factor is the most dependent of all factors.

The proposed research utilizes the ISM and MICMAC tools and thus has all the limitations of structural modeling. The application of structural equation modeling in the civil engineering field is limited, but it is hoped that a similar approach can be applied in other areas of engineering.

The factors causing bridge failure have been identified and hierarchical interdependence model has been arrived at by using ISM. On the basis of MICMAC analysis, the factors have also been classified into three categories, namely, influent, autonomous and dependent. The study reaffirms the importance of all factors in the overall performance of a bridge.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the failure factors for the construction firms in a developing nation. Furthermore, the comparison of failure factors for private and government firms are evaluated.

In the present study, comparison between private and government construction firms is done in the context of a construction firm failure. About 60 construction firms were selected in and around the Nashik region for the investigation, where a simple multi-attribute rating technique (SMART) is used for analysis purpose.

It is found that for private firms (private contractors and builders) lack of experience is the major factor for failure of the business as against lack of managerial experience is a critical factor in case of a government contractor.

The outcome of the present study will be used to guide the policymakers during the implementation of governmental and private projects in order to lessen the construction project failures.

Construction company failure is an important aspect in developing countries like India. The limited studies were available in literature which shows failure factors for government and private firms and distinguished them. Hence, the present study extends the construction company failure literature by focusing on government and private firms. Also, the study provides some theoretical guidelines for management to avoid construction company failure in India.

This study aims to discover the impact of failure factors on stakeholder coordination performance (SCP) in the finishing phase of high-rise building projects.

Firstly, this study identifies potential failure factors affecting coordination performance as well as criteria for measuring SCP in the finishing phase of high-rise building projects. Afterwards, a survey questionnaire is designed to collect data from high-rise building projects in Vietnam. Using the factor analysis method, the study discovers the failure constructs. A structural equation model is then built to uncover the relationships between failure constructs and SCP.

The study identified four failure constructs which could significantly affect SCP, namely traditional adversarial relationship (TAR), incompetent parties (IP), poor project planning and organization (PPO) and delays of parties toward construction works (DP). The developed model indicated that TAR, PPO and IP significantly affected stakeholders' coordination performance in the finishing phase of high-rise building projects.

The results of the study fill the gap in knowledge by discovering the causal relationships between failure constructs and SCP in high-rise building projects. The results might provide an initial guideline for stakeholders during the finishing phase of high-rise building projects to enhance their coordination performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of non-financial and financial factors to firm survival, provide evidence of factors related to financial success and distress for prominent Australian agricultural firms, and improve the predictive capacity of financial failure models.

The paper utilizes mixed method exploratory case studies across four Australian agricultural firms (two successful and two failed) listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

The authors found that the use of an Integrated Multi-Measured approach provided a higher classification rate for the failed group than those provided by an individual measure. We also discovered that non-financial factors associated with the agricultural organizations studied impacted their success or failure. These factors included managements’ involvement in organizational strategy and the composition of the board of directors. It was also apparent that management decision-making approaches may become frozen, or at best restricted, in the face of impending failure, dependent upon the stress level within the organization and the management skill base.

The cases studied indicated that non-financial factors of failure occurred prior to any financial predictors, intuitively indicating a relationship between non-financial and financial factors in Australian agricultural firms.

The identification of financial and non-financial factors and sound internal processes which distinguish successful and failing firms can be utilized for the development of an early warning predictor of organizational success or failure.

This study aims to investigate and analyze the factors affecting the probable failure of rural entrepreneurs so that the most important factors responsible for failure in the business of small and local entrepreneurs are identified.

The present survey was conducted through the descriptive-analytical method by using a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population of the study included 1,641 greenhouse owner entrepreneurs in five rural communities. To clarify the key criteria affecting probable failure of greenhouse businesses, LISREL 8.8 computer software was used and the effects of selected indices on the process of probable failure of entrepreneurs were assessed using stepwise regression in the SPSS computer application environment.

According to the results, individual and managerial skills factors, deterrent financial and legal issues, social barriers and infrastructural issues investigated in this study were of the first to the fourth priorities in clarifying factors affecting probable failure of greenhouse businesses. Considering the intragroup relations in these factors, it could be said that individual and managerial skills factors and infrastructural issues had the highest correlation coefficient which could be attributed to individual and management weaknesses of entrepreneurs in understanding infrastructural issues as the most important parameters to be considered in starting businesses.

So far, few studies analyzed the failure of rural entrepreneurs and evaluated the probable factors affecting it. Thus, the present study is among the earliest instances in the field and its results could be of great benefit to domestic entrepreneurs and similar cases in other countries.

This paper aims to examine the factors that lead to the failure of startups in India and proposes a ‘Four Dimensional (4D) Strategic Framework’ to drive success.

This study is exploratory and uses a narrative analysis methodology to analyse the accounts of key startup stakeholders – founders, investors, former employees and consumers; to identify their failure factors. A conveniently selected sample of 165 startups was studied to understand better the reasons for their failure within a thematic framework developed from David Feinleib’s (2012) handbook “Why Startups Fail”.

Results indicate that a dearth of capital or running out of money and inadequate sales and marketing strategy, which leads businesses to fall behind rivals and lose money on each transaction, are the most common factors for startup failure in India.

“Startups” are substantial for emerging economies like India because they fuel technological innovation and economic progress and provide for the modern workforce’s needs and aspirations. However, they seem to be typically unprofitable, with a modest probability of survival. Subsisting studies mainly focus primarily on success factors and very few on why startups fail, with significant disagreement on an appropriate methodology. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses failure factors of Indian startups using narrative analysis of its key stakeholders. It aims to aid the conception of profitable entrepreneurship by reducing the failure frequency in the startup and small business ecology.

The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative and detailed review of the critical factors that cause enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation failures, based on an in‐depth literature review (1997‐2009).

Keywords relating to the subject of this paper were defined, and used to search web engines and journal databases for papers on ERP implementation failures. These papers were further analysed and classified into various categories.

Nine factors are found to be critical in the failure of ERP implementations: excessive customisation, dilemma of internal integration, poor understanding of business implications and requirements, lack of change management, poor data quality, misalignment of IT with business, hidden costs, limited training and lack of top management support.

The paper proposes the development of a framework to address each ERP implementation failure factor in its entirety based on the frequency of its occurrence in industry, as a topic for future research.

The paper contributes to research in the ERP domain by highlighting ERP implementation challenges from a critical failure perspective and proportion of the failures, as opposed to presenting critical success factors. Failure factors with examples provides a clearer visibility of the costly damages that can be introduced into organisations in the event that these failures are ignored.

The goal of this paper is to present the main critical failure factors extracted from analyzing ten case studies of failure in knowledge management (KM) systems and projects and present a framework in which the failure factors are linked to the different stages in the cycle of KM implementation.

“Grounded theory” as a qualitative research technique has been applied to explore the main failure factors. Data was collected reviewing scholarly articles containing KM case studies (failure in KM implementation) and after an in-depth study – applying grounded theory method – the results of main critical failure factors categorized and analyzed in specific stages of implementing KM systems.

Through review and analysis of ten case studies, two main results were obtained. First, the main critical failure factors of KM projects were identified. Second, identified critical failure factors were traced along the KM implementation cycle. A framework is proposed that shows the critical failure factors' effect in each specific stage of the KM cycle.

The results of this research are generalized based on cases from prior literature. However, the authors have tried to be as inclusive as possible to ensure a representative sample of reported KM failures. In addition, organizations do not provide accurate reports of failure in their projects because of their policies, the image of their organization, and privacy, which could affect the identification of all failure factors.

The findings are incorporated into a framework of failure factors in KM projects and the proposed framework can help practitioners in organizations to avoid factors that lead to the demise of KM systems in each stage of the KM project development cycle. This multi-case study research and its suggested framework are also useful for academics to gain a comprehensive view of KM critical failure factors for future studies.

To the authors' knowledge this study is the first of its kind to provide an integrated perspective of critical failure factors for the implementation of KM through the inspection of ten case studies and maps the failure factors on KM implementation cycle. It provides valuable information and guidelines that will hopefully pave the way for managers to avoid failure in implementation of a KM.