Managing the Organizational Impacts of Information Systems

Abstract

Information technology is now a ubiquitous and increasingly critical part of the fabric of the modern organization, supporting its day-to-day operations and all aspects of the decision-making process, as well as its strategic positioning. It is, therefore, not perhaps surprising that the implementation of a new technology or information system is likely to result in wide array of impacts to the organization as well as the working lives of individual employees. There is a growing consensus within the literature that many such impacts are not deterministic and cannot therefore be easily predicted prior to a system’s implementation (e.g., DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). The corollary of this is that many of the consequences of an information system’s implementation will be unanticipated (Robey & Boudreau, 1999). While some of these unanticipated consequences, or incidental side effects, may be of a positive nature, negative impacts are also quite common, as IT-induced organizational change often results in user resistance and, in extreme cases, possibly even system rejection (Martinsons & Chong, 1999).