Understanding Strategic ISD Project in Practice – An ANT Account of Success and Failure

This paper presents an interpretive case study of a strategic information system development (ISD) project in an insurance Company whose outcomes were perceived as both a success and a failure. By following actors – both human and non-human – involved in the strategic ISD project and the processes of inscribing and aligning interests within their actor-networks, the paper aims to unpack and provide a rich description of the contradictory nature of the socio-technical in such a project and the making of its success and failure. Guided by Actor Network Theory (ANT) the description traces the emergence of heterogeneous actor-networks and reveals how and why some interests did translate while others didn’t into the IS designs, thereby producing the perceptions of success or failure.