Organizational resistance to EIS development : A multiple case study

Executive Information Systems' (EIS) implementations are political because they offer an opportunity to change the organizational power structure. EIS developers who ignore this issue when implementing an EIS are bound to fail. After all, these systems are targeted at the organization's most influential executives, and thus have profound commercial, organizational and political implications. The change in information availability brought about by an EIS implementation can, in turn, lead to feelings of resentment, concern and resistance among other members of the organization. Therefore, an important issue in EIS implementation is the organization's receptiveness to the changes which are likely to be effected by the EIS. This paper reports on the failure of two organizations to successfully implement an EIS against organizational resistance. What makes these cases interesting is not the issue of organizational resistance, but the fact that they failed against the will of its top executives, apparently brought about by the information systems' contradicting the prevailing management systems.