Essentials of Contemporary Management 7th Edition by Gareth Jones,Jennifer George

Exercise 16

Using New Information Systems
Form groups of three or four people, and appoint one member as the spokesperson who will communicate your findings to the whole class when called upon by the instructor. Then discuss the following scenario.
You are a team of managing partners of a large firm of accountants. You are responsible for auditing your firm's information systems to determine whether they are appropriate and up-todate. To your surprise, you find that although your organization does have an email system in place and accountants are connected into a powerful local area network (LAN), most of the accountants (including partners) are not using this technology. You also find that the organizational hierarchy is still the preferred information system of the managing partners.
Given this situation, you are concerned that your organization is not exploiting the opportunities offered by new information systems to obtain a competitive advantage. You have discussed this issue and are meeting to develop an action plan to get accountants to appreciate the need to learn, and to take advantage of, the potential of the new information technology.
What problems do you think you may encounter in convincing accountants to use the new information technology?