Resistance to Technological Change: The Case of the Unused Calculators

Abstract

This case offers students the opportunity to examine factors contributing to employee resistance to technological change and formulate plans for overcoming this resistance.  It also allows students to anticipate and discuss the challenges that organizational newcomers may face when trying to introduce change to new work settings.  Inez Figueroa is a junior mathematics instructor at the American School for the Deaf (ASD), a private high school for non-hearing students.  Figueroa’s passion was teaching mathematics using innovative learning technologies, and she had been hired by ASD to introduce new technologies that would help deaf students succeed in math and science courses.  But her attempts to introduce a visually enhanced, technologically sophisticated calculator had been repeatedly criticized and rebuffed by senior colleagues and her supervisor.  The widespread resistance to new learning technologies left Figueroa increasingly demoralized and questioning why she had been hired in the first place.  Figueroa must decide (1) how she can overcome the faculty’s resistance to new learning technologies and (2) whether she should even try.