User resistance and strategies for promoting acceptance across system types

Abstract

Understanding the factors that contribute to the success of systems implementation efforts is a central concern in the field of information systems (IS). One key factor to which many implementation problems have been attributed is user resistance to change. Different types of systems tend to be associated with different organizational functions and classes of users, and thus may be resisted for different reasons. This paper reports the results of a study investigating the link between resistance reasons and system types and assessing managerial perceptions of the relative importance of various strategies for promoting acceptance in the context of those types. Surveying 66 managers in a variety of organizations, our results suggest that decision support systems (DSS) and transaction processing systems (TPS) are resisted for different reasons, and that promotion strategy effectiveness also differs. Additionally, our study attempts to make explicit, based on system type, key reasons for user resistance and the remedies designed to promote acceptance. This improves our overall understanding of the resistance phenomenon and guides analysts in selecting an appropriate strategy for a given system type. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.