ABSTRACT Many Information Systems (IS) projects fail to be completed within budget and on schedule. A contributing factor is the so-called planning fallacy in which people tend to underestimate the resources required to complete a project. In this paper, we propose that signals of the planning fallacy can be detected in a project’s business case. We investigated whether language usage in business cases can serve as an early warning signal for overruns in IS projects. Drawing on two theoretical perspectives – the Linguistic Category Model (LCM) and Construal Level Theory (CLT) – two sets of rival hypotheses were tested concerning the relationship between project overruns and whether the language usage in a business case is abstract or concrete. A linguistic analysis of the business cases of large IS projects in the Netherlands suggests that concrete language usage in the business case is associated with bigger budget and schedule overruns. For researchers, our study contributes to the existing literature on the importance of language usage. For practitioners, our study provides an early warning indicator for overruns.

中文翻译：

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检测 IS 项目中超支的预警信号：业务案例语言的语言分析

摘要 许多信息系统 (IS) 项目未能在预算内按计划完成。一个促成因素是所谓的计划谬误，即人们倾向于低估完成项目所需的资源。在本文中，我们建议可以在项目的业务案例中检测到规划谬误的信号。我们调查了商业案例中的语言使用是否可以作为 IS 项目超支的预警信号。利用两个理论视角——语言类别模型 (LCM) 和解释水平理论 (CLT)——测试了两组对立的假设，涉及项目超支之间的关系以及业务案例中的语言使用是抽象的还是具体的。对荷兰大型 IS 项目业务案例的语言分析表明，业务案例中具体语言的使用与更大的预算和进度超支有关。对于研究人员来说，我们的研究有助于现有关于语言使用重要性的文献。对于从业者而言，我们的研究为超支提供了预警指标。