A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on intensive research in information systems
Power, politics, and MIS implementation
Communications of the ACM
Affection not affliction: The role of emotions in information systems and organizational change
Information and Organization
Learning to Implement Enterprise Systems: An Exploratory Study of the Dialectics of Change
Journal of Management Information Systems
Information Systems Journal
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In this paper, we examine the process by which user cynicism emerges and is constituted as part of resistance in information technology (IT) implementation. We ground our process perspective in the received user resistance literature by linking cynicism to users' projections of the system's future use. Rather than attributing cynicism to perceived threats, however, we see user cynicism as cognitively distanced resistance that manifests as a perception of seeing through the espoused goals of the implementers. Based on a process analysis of a customer relationship management implementation at a customer service centre, the paper extends the user resistance model proposed by Lapointe and Rivard by identifying three dimensions of user cynicism in IT implementation. It also shows how cynicism, as a form of passive resistance, easily escalates and feeds new forms of resistance. Lastly, we introduce the cynicism literature as a new reference theory for the Information Systems (IS) audience. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.