Exploring the Scope of User Resistance

Abstract

Although innovation adoption has been given much attention in information systems (IS) literature, it has less to account for in user resistance. This chapter contributes to this ongoing debate through a bibliometric review of the user resistance research for the period 1978 to the first quarter of 2019 to provide a coherent overview of the recent research trends and theoretical cornerstones. The authors merged two approaches—co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling—to (1) create a visualized network of articles that focus on ‘user resistance' and (2) to create distinct yet related clusters of articles related thematically. In the findings, they illustrate via the co-citation analysis that user resistance research builds on four main theoretical cornerstones: status quo bias and equity implementation theories, organizational change, social influence and perceived usefulness, power and politics. In conclusion, more research is needed on this theme from a developing economy perspective as IS adoption and usage gains maturity.