Factors Influencing Resistance to Information Technology Related Change in The Telecommunication Industry: A Case Study of Dialog Telecom

Abstract

With rapid technological changes, organizations and individuals are faced with numerous challenges as to how best to cope with and adapt to such changes. There can be forces encouraging change and forces against change. This particular piece of research is interested in investigating the second category: forces against change or resistance to change. The researcher has defined five research objectives to investigate the factors effecting individuals to resist information technology (IT) related change. The research objectives were aimed at identifying organizational, individual and technological factors influencing IT related change while the research also endeavoured to identify which factors have the strongest influence in the change process. The fifth research objective was concerned with providing suggestions to minimize resistance to IT related change. A review of past research was used to identify the three main categories of resistance factors (Individual, Technological, and Organizational) and these factors were tested in the context of IT related change in the Sri Lankan Telecommunication sector, with special emphasis on Dialog Telekom (Pvt) Ltd. from where a simple random sample of 220 was drawn for data gathering. A questionnaire was used as the data collection tool to test the relationship between the above categories of factors with resistance to IT related change. The respondents to the questionnaire included IT users from both managerial and non-managerial levels at Dialog Telekom (Pvt) Ltd. representing all the departments. Data gathered from the respondents were analysed using Spearman’s correlation as the suitable statistical treatment. In the results obtained, the most striking finding is that when technological factors were tested, it was revealed that only ‘the extent to which the user requirements are met by the technology’ acts as a strong influencer in determining resistance behaviour. Other factors such as system design; accessibility or usability of the system shows no significant impact on resistance. Towards the latter part of the thesis, recommendations and suggestions were discussed which could be useful to practicing managers and scholars alike in managing and understanding resistance to IT related change in organizations.