Information Systems Failure Explained through the Lens of the Cultural Web

This paper provides a discussion of the Australian telecommunications company One.Tel Limited. The paper examines the information technology strategies employed by the company and assesses the extent to which a failure of those strategies may have contributed to, or precipitated, the downfall of the business. In particular, it looks at the company through the lens of Johnson and Scholes’ (1993) cultural web. This perspective provides clear evidence of failings at the company, which were likely to have led to failure in its IT/IS policy and applications which, in turn, at least partly explains the downfall of the business.