User resistance and strategies for promoting acceptance across system types

Understanding the factors that contribute to the success of systems impleme ntation efforts is a central concern in the field of information systems (I S). One key factor to which many implementation problems have been attribut ed is user resistance to change. Different types of systems tend to be asso ciated with different organizational functions and classes of users, and th us 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. Surveyi ng 66 managers in a variety of organizations, our results suggest that deci sion support systems (DSS) and transaction processing systems (TPS) are res isted for different reasons, and that promotion strategy effectiveness also differs. Additionally, our study attempts to make explicit, based on syste m type, key reasons for user resistance and the remedies designed to promot e acceptance. This improves our overall understanding of the resistance phe nomenon and guides analysts in selecting an appropriate strategy for a give n system type. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.