Why is there considerable resistance in organization towards introduction of information system?

• Define an organization and compare the technical definition of organizations with the behavioral definition.
• Identify and describe the features of organizations that help explain differences in organizations’ use of information systems.
• Describe the major economic theories that help explain how information systems affect organizations.
• Describe the major behavioral theories that help explain how information systems affect organizations.
• Explain why there is considerable organizational resistance to the introduction of information systems.
• Describe the impact of the Internet and disruptive technologies on organizations.

• The technical definition defines an organization as a stable, formal social structure that takes resources from the environment and processes them to produce outputs. This definition of an organization focuses on three elements: Capital, labor, and production and products for consumption. The technical definition also implies that organizations are more stable than an informal group in terms of longevity and routines.Organizations are formal legal entities with internal rules and procedures that must abide by laws. Organizations are also social structures because they are a collection of social elements.
• The behavioral definition states that an organization is a collection of rights, privileges, obligations, and responsibilities that are delicately balanced over a period of time through conflict and conflict resolution. This definition highlights the people within the organization, their ways of working, and their relationships. 
• The technical and behavioral definitions of organizations are not contradictory. They complement each other: The technical definition tells us how thousands of firms in competitive markets combine capital, labor, and information technology, whereas the behavioral model takes us inside the individual firm to see how that technology affects the organization’s inner workings.
• Common features for organizations include:
• Routines and business processes: Standard operating procedures are precise rules, procedures, and practices that have been developed to cope with virtually all expected situations that allow the organization to become productive and efficient thereby reducing costs overtime.
• Organizational politics: Divergent viewpoints about how resources, rewards, and punishments should be distributed bring about political resistance to organization change.
•  Organizational culture: Assumptions that define the organizational goals and products create a powerful restraint on change, especially technological change.
• Organizational environments: Reciprocal relationships exist between an organization and environments; information systems provide organizations a way to identify external changes that might require an organizational response.
• Organizational structure: Information systems reflect the type of organizational structure -entrepreneurial, machine bureaucracy, divisionalized bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, or adhocracy.
• The two major economic theories are transaction cost theory and agency theory. The transaction cost theory is based on the notion that a firm incurs transaction costs when it buys goods in the marketplace rather than making products for itself. Traditionally, firms ought to reduce transaction costs by getting bigger, hiring more employees, vertical and horizontal integration, and small-company takeovers. Information technology helps firms lower the cost of market participation (transaction costs) and helps firms shrink in size while producing the same or greater amount of output.
• The agency theory views the firm as a nexus of contracts among interested individuals. The owner employs agents (employees) to perform work on his or her behalf and delegates some decision making authority to the agents. Agents need constant supervision and management, which introduces management costs. As firms grow, management costs rise. Information technology reduces agency costs by providing information more easily so that managers can supervise a larger number of people with fewer resources.
• Behavioral theories, from sociology, psychology, and political science, are useful for describing the behavior of individual firms. Behavioral researchers theorize that information technology could change the decision-making hierarchy by lowering the costs of information acquisition and distribution. IT could eliminate middle managers and their clerical support by sending information from operating units directly to senior management and by enabling information to be sent directly to lower-level operating units. It even enables some organizations to act as virtual organizations because they are no longer limited by geographic locations. 
• One behavioral approach views information systems as the outcome of political competition between organizational subgroups. IT becomes very involved with this competition because it controls who has access to what information, and information systems can control who does what, when, where, and how.
• There is considerable organizational resistance to new information systems because they change many important organizational dimensions, such as culture, structure, politics, and work. Levitt puts forth a model that says that changes in technology are absorbed, deflected, and defeated by organizational task arrangements, structures, and people. In this model the only way to bring about change is to change the technology, tasks, structure, and people simultaneously. In a second model, the authors speak of the need to unfreeze organizations before introducing an innovation, quickly implementing the new system, and then refreezing or institutionalizing the change.
• The Internet increases the accessibility, storage, and distribution of information and knowledge for organizations; nearly any information can be available anywhere at any time. The Internet increases the scope, depth, and range of information and knowledge storage. It lowers the cost and raises the quality of information and knowledge distribution. That is, it lowers transaction costs and information acquisition costs. By using the Internet, organizations may reduce several levels of management, enabling closer and quicker communication between upper levels of management and the lower levels. The Internet also lowers agency costs.
• Disruptive technologies caused by technological changes can have different effects on different companies depending on how they handle the changes. Some companies create the disruptions and succeed very well. Other companies learn about the disruption and successfully adopt it. Other companies are obliterated by the changes because they are very efficient at doing what no longer needs to be done. Some disruptions mostly benefit the firm. Other disruptions mostly benefit consumers.

QUESTION 1 - NicholetteWhat is an organization? Compare the technical definition of organizations with the behavioral definition.An organization is a stable,formal structure that takes resources from the environment and processes them to produce outputs.The technical definition focus on the primary factors of production, capital and labour which are provided by the environment, which are transformed by the firm through the production process into products and services (outputs to the environment). The products and services are consumed by the environment, which supplies additional capital and labour as inputs in the feedback loop.The behavioral definition emphasis the collection of rights, privileges, obligations and responsibilities that is balanced over time through conflict and conflict resolution.

Question 2 - Moreka
What features do all organizations have in common? In which ways can organizations differ?

The features that all oraganizations have in commons are clear division of labor, hierarchy explicit rules and procedures impartical judgment technical qualifcations for positions and maximum organizational efficiency, although all organizations do have common characteristics no to organizations are identical organizations have different structures goals constituencies,( who they serve) leadership styles tasks and surrounding evniviroment. (B) Organizations differ in one inportant way such as structure or shape. they are five ways organizations types entepreneurical structure machine bureaucracy, divisiononglized bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy and adhocroacy.

Question 4 - Wilbert

Describe the major economic theories that help explain how information systems affect organizations.

According to transaction cost theory, information technology especially the use of networks can help firms lower the cost of market participation (transaction cost) making it worthwhile for firms to contract with external suppliers instead of using internal sources.

According to agency theory information technology can reduce internal management cost by reducing the number of agents (employees) and reducing the amount of constant supervision and management required. This is done through reling on the IT to reduce the cost of acquiring and analyzing information.

Question 5 - Camardia

Describe the major behavioral theories that help explain how information systems affect organizations.

Behavioral researchers have theorized that information technology facilitates flattening of hierarchies by broadening the distribution of information to empower lower-level employees and increase management efficiency. IT pushes decision-making rights lower in the organization so that lower-level employees can receive the information they need to make decisions without supervision. Also, because managers can now receive so much more accurate information on time, they have become much faster at decision making thereby requiring fewer managers.

Question 6 - Kelly-Ann

Why is there considerable organization resistance to the introduction of information systems?

Many IT investments require changes in personal, individual routines that can be painful for those involved and require additional efforts on the part of the employee who may or may not be compensated. Another approach views information systems as the outcome of political competition, between organization subgroups for influence over the organization's policies, procedures and resources. IS influence access to a key resource - information - and these systems can affect who does what to whom, when, where and how. IS also potentially can change an organization's structure, culture, and politics , this is the root cause of resistance to them when they are introduced.

As a result of this powerful resistance to change, many IT investments flounder and do not increase productivity. Indeed, research on project implementation failure demonstrates that the most common reason for failure of large projects to reach their objectives is not the failure of the technology, but organizational and political resistance to change.

Question 12 - Tamyra
Describe appropriate strategies for the firm level and how information systems can help companies compete at this level.
A business firm can be basically described as a collection of strategic business units. The firm can be directly tied to strategic business units performance by the returns. Information systems improve the performance of these firms by promoting synergies and competencies.The purpose of information technology in these synergy situation, is to connect operation of these firms by promoting synergies and competencies.Another strategy would involve the notion of core competency. Core competency is an activity in which a firm becomes a world class leader.

It depends on knowledge that is gained over a number of years. Therefore, any information system that encourages the exchange of knowledge between businesss units improve competency. This would also help employees tobe abreast with the new external knowledge.

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