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IS Learning Studio, Fall 2007 :: Blog :: Power, Politics, and MIS Implementation by Lynne Markus (CACM, 1983)

November 08, 2007

This paper describes very interesting perspectives and theories that explain the resistance to information systems. Based on the previous researches, she defines three different perspectives as to why people in an organization resist using information systems: people-determined, system-determined, and interaction theory. As causes of resistance, while people-determined theory focuses on the factors internal to people and groups, such as cognitive styles and human nature, system-determined theory emphasizes the system factors such as lack of user-friendliness and poor technical design. The interaction theory she focuses on stresses on interaction of system and context of use. That is, people resist systems because of the interaction between characteristics of people and features of system.  She defines two variants of the interaction theory: socio-technical variant and political variant. The socio-technical view means that systems can create organizational change and induce the resistance. The political view focuses on the intra-organizational power relationship.
 
She also sees the resistance from other points of view: rational theory and non-rational theory. Rational theory means that systems have common purposes and people use the systems to achieve the goals. However, the non-rational theory means that different subgroups in an organization may have different purposes about a system and their local optimizations do not necessarily mean the global optimization. In other words, the resistance to information systems may be a complex problem that involves many different factors. From this article, we can extract valuable implications for the area of IS implementation. We should consider the interaction between people and system factors and non-rational factors as well as rational factors. 
 
In this light, we can use this framework to analyze why municipalities are moving towards the municipal wireless. We can see the people-determined and technology-determined factors respectively. And we can also consider the interaction between those two different kinds of factors in terms of socio-technical and political perspectives. Moreover, we can see the problem from the points of rational and non-rational perspectives. That is, we can see the problem both by considering rational factors such as costs and benefits of municipal wireless and by inquiring non-rational factors such as the power relationships between private and public sectors.

 

Posted by IS Learning Studio, Fall 2007 - Myungjae Kwak

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