User resistance strategies and the problems of blanket prescriptions: a case study of resistance success

Griffiths, M; Light, BA

Abstract

There is a growing body of research on resistance in IS projects, a good deal of which focuses on strategies for overcoming resistance. However, within this strand of research, it appears that there is a ‘blanket prescription’ approach that does not account for diversity in resistance reasoning. We offer a qualitative study of the response of diverse actors to a pilot of a custom developed client tracking information system, which brought about diverse covert and overt resistance activities. This empirical research is used to explore the heterogeneous user and how such a ‘blanket prescription’ to avert organisational-wide resistance went wrong and how resistance succeeded. This paper aims to contribute to the body of existing literature on IS user resistance by emphasizing the injurious continuous error of excluding such constructs as the heterogeneous user within user resistance research.

Citation

Griffiths, M., & Light, B. (2006, June). User resistance strategies and the problems of blanket prescriptions: a case study of resistance success. Presented at 14th European Conference on Information Systems, Gotenberg, Sweden

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: 14th European Conference on Information Systems
• Conference Location: Gotenberg, Sweden
• Start Date: Jun 12, 2006
• End Date: Jun 14, 2006
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Keywords: User resistance, user participation, organisational change, strategic management of systems development.
• Publisher URL: http://is2.lse.ac.uk/asp/aspecis/20060188.pdf
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference