Organizational+Politics

People in organizations occupy different positions with different specialties,concerns, and perspectives. As a result, they naturally have divergentviewpoints about how resources, rewards, and punishments should bedistributed. These differences matter to both managers and employees, andthey result in political struggle for resources, competition, and conflict withinevery organization. Political resistance is one of the great difficulties of bringingabout organizational change, especially the development of new informationsystems. Virtually all large information systems investments by a firm thatbring about significant changes in strategy, business objectives, businessprocesses, and procedures become politically charged events. Managers thatknow how to work with the politics of an organization will be more successfulthan less-skilled managers in implementing new information systems.Throughout this book you will find many examples of where internal politicsdefeated the best-laid plans for an information system