A company has a large percentage of employees who resist the use of new technologies. What should the company consider first before implementing a…

The question highlights a significant organizational challenge: employee resistance to new technologies. This is fundamentally an issue of corporate culture. Before any technical planning or implementation steps are taken, management must first consider the existing culture. A successful technology deployment is not just a technical project but a change management initiative. Understanding the cultural reasons for resistance is the critical first step to developing a strategy that can overcome these barriers, build buy-in, and ensure the new system is actually adopted and used effectively.

A. Pilot testing: This is a tactical step to validate a system's functionality and gather user feedback, which occurs after the initial strategic considerations, including cultural readiness.

B. Employee accessibility: This is a logistical and technical requirement for implementation, but it does not address the root cause of the employees' unwillingness to use new technology.

D. Competitors' systems: Analyzing competitors is a strategic business activity but is irrelevant to solving the company's internal problem of employee resistance to change.

1. Schein

E. H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass. In Part Two

"The Dimensions of Culture

" Schein explains that underlying cultural assumptions dictate employee behavior and their reaction to new initiatives like technology implementation. A failure to understand and manage these cultural aspects is a primary cause of change initiative failure.

2. Kotter

J. P. (1995). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review

73(2)

59–67. Kotter's seminal work on change management identifies failing to create a powerful guiding coalition and not removing obstacles to change (which are often cultural) as key errors. This implies culture must be addressed early.

3. Venkatesh

V.

& Davis

F. D. (2000). A Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: Four Longitudinal Field Studies. Management Science

46(2)

186–204. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.46.2.186.11926. The model shows that "Subjective Norm" and "Social Influence"—key components of organizational culture—are significant determinants of a user's intention to adopt a new technology. This supports considering culture first to gauge and influence potential user acceptance.