The Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry consists of a fragmented and multidisciplinary network with various project participants involved (Grilo et al., 2013; Rizal, 2010). The highly complex nature of the construction value chain often results in quality problems due to errors and defects, time and cost overruns as well as the extensive use of resources (Kerosuo, 2015). The adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) can help the AEC industry to overcome these deficiencies by improving design, collaboration and communication (Azhar, 2011; Eastman et al., 2011; Kerosuo, 2015). But despite the numerous benefits as well as the given maturity of BIM, many companies are still reluctant to its adoption (Barlish and Sullivan, 2012; Becerik-Gerber and Rice, 2010). Over the past decade, many BIM studies have addressed this issue and identified a plethora of technological, legal, economic and social barriers. In examining the barriers to a widespread adoption of BIM, previous literature predominantly focuses on providing quantitative results from single countries, such as China (Jin et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017), Australia (Hosseini et al., 2016; Newton and Chileshe, 2012) or the UK (Eadie et al., 2013, 2014). However, there are so far neither attempts at investigating the barriers from a more global perspective, nor are there theoretically founded explanations, which again are critical to the development of strategies for bridging these. Notwithstanding the fact that BIM constitutes an interdisciplinary research area at the interface between various disciplines, such as information systems (IS), construction informatics and construction management, it has been largely neglected in mainstream IS research and is rather assigned to engineering disciplines with a highly technological focus (Merschbrock and Munkvold, 2012). Given the high relevance of BIM as one of the most promising technological developments for the AEC sector (Eastman et al., 2011, p. 1; Merschbrock and Munkvold, 2012), the lack of interest in IS research is surprising and prompted researchers to appeal to the IS community to strengthen its contribution to BIM research (Merschbrock and Munkvold, 2012).