Gary Pan

• Singapore Management University

Due to the shift in partner’s identity, there have been growing interests in understanding characteristics, skills and behaviours of accounting partners. Given that Big 4 Accounting firms are supposedly international accounting firms that are organized in similar structures, an interesting question of whether the same partner qualities can be appli...

Online learning has been gaining widespread adoption due to its success in enhancing student-learning outcomes and improving student academic performance. This paper describes an online tutorial to teach resource-event-agent (REA) data modeling in an undergraduate accounting information systems course. The REA online tutorial reflects a self-study...

The pervasiveness of information technology (IT) in businesses has altered the nature and economies of accounting activities. In particular, the emergence of cloud computing, eXtensible Business Reporting Language, and business analytics in recent years have transformed the way companies report financial performance and make business decisions. As...

Extracurricular activities (ECA) have become an important component of students’ school life and many schools have invested significant resources on extracurricular activities. The authors suggest three major theoretical frameworks (zero-sum, developmental, and threshold) to explain the impact of ECA participation on students’ academic performance....

No one really knows what the first story ever told in human history was, but storytelling is an art that spans many civilizations and cultures, and continues to be a major part of our modern lives. More recently, storytelling has gone digital with advances in technology and connectivity. Educators have also rediscovered how storytelling can be an e...

In the past two decades, organizational scholars have focused significant attention on how organizations manage crises. While most of these studies concentrate on crisis prevention, there is a growing emphasis on crisis response. Because information that is critical to crisis response may become outdated as crisis conditions change, crisis response...

This case highlights the specific risks and issues that may be encountered in the information systems (IS) procurement process in a country where bribery and corruption are more common. PSO is a large Indian public sector organization involved in energy-related business. Being financially deprived, PSO relied on government funding to build its infr...

This study investigates the association of prior academic achievement, admission interview, critical thinking, mathematical aptitude, gender and age with successful academic performance in an undergraduate accountancy degree programme at a Singapore university. The purpose of revisiting the determinants of academic performance is twofold: first, un...

This paper seeks to understand the factors that shape management executives' influence behaviors and the influence tactics that may be utilized during de-escalation of commitment to information systems (IS) projects. De-escalation is potentially a more important issue than escalation because de-escalation provides remedies for the ills of escalatio...

Introduction Taming runaway Information Technology (IT) projects is a challenge that most organizations have faced and that managers continue to wrestle with. These are projects that grossly exceed their planned budgets and schedules, often by a factor of 2--3 fold or greater. Many end in failure; failure not only in the sense of budget or schedule...

The record of failure to deliver large-scale information systems (IS) in a timely fashion that offer value to major commercial and public organizations is legendary. Just looking to critical success factors such as top management support and user involvement in order to understand how to deliver better systems can at best be a partial solution. We...

Research on crisis management recognizes the important role of information although few studies of crisis response deal explicitly with information systems. In this paper, we present a case study of Singapore’s response to the SARS and Asian Tsunami disasters. Using the resource-based view of the firm as our theoretical lens, we examine three resea...

This paper presents an integrated theoretical process model for identifying , describing, and analyzing the complex escalation and de-escalation phenomena in software development projects. The approach-avoidance theory is used to integrate core elements of various escalation theories into a holistic, explanatory framework for the two phenomena. We...

This paper develops a theoretical framework and empirical formulation for describing and analyzing the information systems (IS) implementation process. Here, the sequential mapping of project events is integrated with the ‘Exchange Relations’ model of IS failure that identifies evolving recursive interactions. Three major IS implementation componen...

The bursting of the dot com bubble in March 2000 caused firms to be wary about investment in, and the use of, information technologies. Consequently, demand in technology-related jobs dropped significantly. This drop in demand has had a profound negative impact on the demand for information systems (IS) courses in the tertiary education sector. Som...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a stakeholder analysis to find out what factors contribute to partial abandonment and also to examine stakeholders' roles and role conflicts in a partial abandonment implementation process. Design/methodology/approach – A case study of a partially abandoned electronic procurement system project is...

From 1992 to 2005 Singapore National Library Board has successfully incorporated information technology into its working procedures and customer service. The organization has adopted Radio Frequency Identification and other technology applications; transformed its operating routines and provided access to millions of publications for its library us...

From 1992 to 2005 Singapore National Library Board (NLB) successfully incorporated IT into its working procedures and customer service. The organization has adopted RFID and other technology applications; transformed its operating routines and provided access to millions of publications for its library users. A key issue in this transformation was...

Information systems (IS) project failure is a costly and common problem. This is despite advances in development tools and technologies. In this article, we argue that one reason for this is the failure of project postmortems to generate constructive “lessons learned” from previous projects. Over time, the ineffective practices would persist in the...

Past research using the resource-based view of a firm suggests that it is important to consider how firms develop, manage, and deploy resources and capabilities to influence the overall process of strategy formation and implementation. Relatively little research has been conducted in conceptualizing how firms implement and manage modularity of orga...

The implementation of e-government is a burgeoning phenomenon across the globe. It improves and enhances the infrastructures and services provided to the citizens. However, a review of the IS literature reveals that research on the implementation of e-government is rather limited, which could be due to the general misconception of the public sector...

The implementation of e-government is a burgeoning phenomenon across the globe. It improves and enhances the infrastructures and services provided to the citizens. However, a review of the IS literature reveals that research on the implementation of e-government is rather limited, which could be due to the general misconception of the public sector...

Despite recent reports that suggest growing evidence of a higher rate of information systems project success, experts have warned against complacency over the risks associated with project failure. While IS project failure has been attracting constant attention in recent years, IS project abandonment – which is a subset of the larger organizational...

The resource-based view suggests that organizations achieve and maintain competitive advantage through effective deployment of firm-specific resources and capabilities. Because of volatile market conditions, researchers now focus on the development of dynamic capabilities that allow firms to react and create change in these dynamic environments. De...

This paper outlines a project evaluation model for examining escalation and de-escalation of commitment to information systems projects. We view escalation and de-escalation of commitment as processes involving recurring instances of approach-avoidance conflict. In the model, the sequential mapping of project events is integrated with a model of ap...

Recent years have witnessed many organizations switching from function-oriented to customer-centric in their information systems applications designs. This paradigm shift has attracted growing attention among researchers in better understanding the design process of customer-centric IS applications – an area that has not been investigated adequatel...

This paper presents a commitment transformation framework for analysing the change in actors’ commitment during the transition from escalation to de-escalation in information technology projects. De-escalation is potentially a more important issue than escalation because de-escalation provides remedies for the ills of escalation. Therefore, it is i...

. This paper presents a commitment transformation framework for analysing the change in actors’ commitment during the transition from escalation to de-escalation in information technology projects. De-escalation is potentially a more important issue than escalation because de-escalation provides remedies for the ills of escalation. Therefore, it is...

Given that decision makers continue to face dilemmas on whether to persist or desist with troubled projects, it is important for senior managers to support the assessment of decision dilemmas faced by project managers. By drawing on two case studies that exhibit project escalation situation, decision-makers in both cases were interviewed and import...

We view escalation and de-escalation of commitment as processes involving recurring instances of approach-avoidance conflict. This paper outlines an approach-avoidance process model for describing and analyzing escalation and de-escalation of commitment in information systems projects. In the model, the sequential mapping of project events is integ...

This case study reports on the experience of an organization in Singapore in implementing and eventually abandoning an electronic procurement project. By means of a stakeholder analysis, it examines stakeholders’ roles in the organization's decision to abandon the software project. This study uses Freeman's stakeholder analytical framework (Freeman...

The city-state of Singapore has been highly ranked for its e-Government services. Over the past two decades, it has leveraged its IT infrastructure for economic development and transformed its public services. The SARS outbreak in 2004 turned into a national health crisis because it spread rapidly and the medical community had little knowledge of h...

Escalation of commitment is a common and costly problem among information system projects. Although the potential of de-escalation of commitment to failing courses of action has been much heralded, many de-escalation efforts may result in failure due to constituencies biasing facts in the direction of previously accepted beliefs and therefore preve...

Escalation is a common and costly problem among IT projects. Although the potential of de-escalation of commitment to failing courses of action has been much heralded, many such efforts may result in failure due to constituencies biasing facts in the direction of previously accepted beliefs, and therefore, prevent an organization from de-escalating...

This paper serves as a stimulus to investigators to examine the role organizational politics plays in decisions leading to the abandonment of information systems (IS) projects. While prior research has identified the development of IS projects as a highly political process, where stakeholders may be more concerned about furthering their self-intere...

This multiple-case study examines the phenomenon of implementing a global information technology product in a localized context. The study attempts to explore issues related to the localization experience encountered by ERP adopters in China. Specifically, the paper explores ERP system implementation in five organizations in China. Despite its pote...

This study adopts a stakeholder analysis to examine stakeholders' roles and contributions in influencing organizational decisions to abandon information systems (IS) development projects. To do so, we adapted from Freeman's (1984) work and developed a theoretical assessment framework to organize and interpret data, and define avenues (five proposit...

This paper serves as a stimulus to investigators to examine the role project postmortem analyses plays in learning from abandoned electronic commerce (e-commerce) projects. While prior research has identified the importance of the review process, there has been very little research on project postmortems on abandoned e-commerce projects. The case d...

This paper serves as a stimulus to investigators to examine the role project postmortem analyses plays in learning from abandoned electronic commerce (e-commerce) projects. While prior research has identified the importance of the review process, there has been very little research on project postmortems on abandoned e-commerce projects. The case d...

This paper outlines a project evaluation model for examining escalation and de-escalation of commitment to information systems projects. We view escalation and de-escalation of commitment as processes involving recurring instances of approach-avoidance conflict. In the model, the sequential mapping of project events is integrated with a model of ap...

This study investigates the association of prior academic achievement, admission interview, critical thinking, mathematical aptitude, gender and age with successful academic performance in an undergraduate accountancy degree programme at a Singapore university. The purpose of revisiting the determinants of academic performance is twofold: firstly,...

Corporate scandals such as Enron, Tyco, WorldCom and Adelphia have drawn significant attention to the occurrence of fraud. This has implications for public interest as the prevalence and consequences of fraud may affect the shareholders, creditors and the public’s confidence in the financial system. Much research has been published on various aspec...