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The need for inter‐organisational information systems projects, which are complex undertakings often riddled with poorly understood power struggles and conflicts that hinder project success, has increased in previous decades. Through the lenses of systemic and episodic power, together with an organisational conflict model, this longitudinal, qualitative case study explores the dynamics of power and conflict and their effects in an inter‐organisational information systems development project. This study highlights that the bureaucratic, social and technical setup of the project forms a foundational system from which specific power practices emerge, in this case, the practices of hiding, storytelling and bargaining. The power practices have both restrictive and productive effects on conflict, but the practices cannot easily escape the confines of the foundational system and continue to cause the resurfacing of different manifestations of latent conflict inherent in the system. As a result, both 'power to' (systemic power) and 'power over' (episodic power) can escalate project conflict, and rational conflict management for gaining 'win‐win' resolutions may not be in the stakeholders' interests. Thus, strategies for openly managing political conflicts should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This longitudinal study looks at the metaphors used in a public sector information systems development project from the perspective of cognitive metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, ). We examine the use of metaphors by project team members, including representatives of the users, software developers and the managers guiding the project work. The findings indicate that project team members and managers use a rich set of metaphors to make sense of the project and the records management system they are working on. Notably, distinct sets of metaphors are used in different project phases and among the project personnel and management. As the differences in the metaphors also coincide with key events in the trajectory of the project, we contend that metaphors have significant power in sensemaking, influencing action and project outcomes. In particular, we find that in highly ambiguous, knowledge-intensive situations, metaphor use with unclear intentions and purpose hinders learning and creates more chaos than order. From a practical perspective, our study highlights the relevance of metaphor use for project management. We suggest that intentional selection of metaphors by management could be beneficial for many complex information systems projects. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]