Resistance to Information Systems and Strategies for Promoting Acceptance

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. This paper reports the results of a survey 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 Management Information Systems (MIS) and Transaction Processing Systems (TPS). Results of this study suggest that TPS and MIS are resisted for different reasons, and effectiveness of different promotion strategies also differs. Additionally, this study attempts to make explicit, based on system type, the key reasons for user resistance and the strategies for promoting acceptance and also presents a pattern for successful system implementation.

Keywords:

implementation strategies , resistance to change , Information Systems