A Reconceptualization of the Concept of Project Success at the Organizational Level

The concept of project success in Information Systems and Project Management research has been one of the key concepts in the field. However, after years of research, the field agrees only that the concept of success is critical to the field, and there is no agreed upon definition or operationalization. This paper addresses these issues by undertaking a critical review of the literature related to project success in the IS and project management fields finding that each of the dominant perspectives has philosophical and practical inadequacies. It then proposes a new conceptualization of project success based on the Morphogenetic Social Theory of Margaret Archer (1988, 1995). This new conceptualization, the paper argues, alleviates these inadequacies and points toward a more robust research agenda for success.