Robert Campbell

This article examines the attitudes that can cause users to resist information system implementations using an established theory from social and cognitive psychology: the Elaboration Likelihood Model. It is argued that users who do not think deeply about systems represent a key blockage and that their attitudes are based largely on heuristics and peripheral influences. The results of a wide-ranging study are presented in which 28 heuristics and peripheral influences that commonly affect user attitudes are identified.

A three-country study was undertaken to assess the educational efficacy of two textbooks authored by the researcher. The same texts were distributed to groups of student nurses in the United Kingdom, Cambodia, and Kenya. A data collection tool was developed to obtain quantitative data and to ask open-ended questions on how useful readers found the texts to be. Quantitative data indicated that the books were useful in areas such as aiding understanding of scientific and medical terminology and helping nurses to assess their patients and understand nursing care. It was also found that simplified diagrams were a useful modality for communicating bioscientific concepts. Answers to open-ended questions indicated areas where the texts could be improved. Evidence for how useful bioscientific concepts can be to improving patient assessment and management was also identified. Significant agreement between quantitative data and answers to open-ended questions was noted. It was concluded that the same texts could have a significant degree of educational acceptance and efficacy in wildly differing cultural and national situations. This approach to resource production and distribution also forms a model other educationalists may choose to adopt.

Purpose
This paper aims to expose the behaviours through which modern professional people commonly obstruct information system (IS) implementations in their workplace. Users often resist IS implementations, and it has been established that this can cause an implementation to fail. As the initial analysis of an on-going research project, this paper does not yet seek to present IS resistance as a good or a bad thing, it simply identifies and codifies forms of IS resistance. Design/methodology/approach – Inductive interviews with IS implementers threw light on 29 resisted projects across 21 organisations. Interviewees were introduced to established theories of attitude change from social and cognitive psychology then asked to reflect on their experiences of IS implementations using these theories as a lens.
Findings Although it is not claimed that all approaches by which users obstruct IS implementations are identified here, we believe that those most commonly deployed have been uncovered. It is also revealed that such behaviours result from negative user attitudes and that their impact can be significant. They can emotionally or psychologically affect system champions and can often cause implementation projects to fail.
Research limitations Our method was based on an epistemic assumption that significant understanding is found in the experience and knowledge (tacit and explicit) of IS implementation experts. The paper’s contents are drawn from reflections on a combined 302 years of experience using attitude change psychology as a lens. Using this method, a range of obstructive behaviours was identified. Although it is claimed that the obstructive behaviours most commonly deployed have been unveiled, it is not probable that this list is comprehensive and could be appended to using alternative approaches.
Practical implications This paper has significant implications for stakeholders in IS implementations. It enables project risks originating from users to be better identified, and it highlights the critical role that negative user attitudes can play in an implementation.
Social implications This paper considers a common area of conflict in professional organisations, modelling its nature and effect. It also encourages system champions to consider user attitude cultivation as a critical part of any implementation project.
Originality/value The contribution of this research is twofold. In the arena of user resistance, it is the first to focus on how implementations are resisted and is accordingly the first to identify and taxonomise forms of IS resistance. A contribution is also made to an ongoing literature conversation on the role of attitude in technology acceptance. This paper is the first to focus, not on user attitudes but on how negative attitudes are manifest in behaviour.

Qualitative research routinely requires experienced practitioners in a given field to be interviewed, and there are a range of methods known to elicit dialogue. The method for elicitation presented in this paper, however, goes a stage further it seeks not only to elicit dialogue but to provide subjects with additional knowledge, which they are encouraged to use as a lens for reflection on their own experience. Using a progressive series of related information graphics, accompanied by explanations, subjects are quickly taught a new topic and are asked to reflect on their own practice while the learning occurs. The research project is described to contextualise the elicitation method within the wider engagement. The approach was tested with a number of Information Technology (I.T.) specialists, each with extensive experience of encouraging users to participate in new I.T. environments. Subjects were provided with information graphics that incrementally increased their understanding of psychological theories related to attitude change, namely cognitive dissonance and the elaboration likelihood model. As their knowledge increased, they were guided to reflect on occasions where they had encountered phenomena related to such psychological theory, its effect and affiliated best practice. Over all, this approach was effective, with over 130,000 words of relevant, advanced discourse forthcoming. In this paper, the elicitation method, its affiliated epistemology, an overview of the project and the research methodology are presented, along with some early results.

Relationships between people who meet in virtual worlds are common and these relationships can be long term, in some cases lasting a life-time. Although relationships formed in virtual worlds have invited a lot of recent interest, surprisingly little work has been done on developing computer agents and non-player characters that can actively participate in such relationships. The focus of this review is relational agents, agents that can build long term socioemotional relationships with users. In virtual worlds, such agents are just starting to emerge; they are more common in other environments but remain few and far between. This review critically assesses the progress of relational agent development and research since their inception in 2005, proposes new areas of research and considers the potential for their exploitation in virtual worlds.