California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

AVL represents a radical change to many working in the public transit industry. When a new technology is introduced factor proportions change, responsibilities are altered and procedures change. There are threats to lines of authority, job security and responsibility. In all cases there are threats and the successful implementation of a new technology into any firm requires that it be managed, it will not happen automatically and ultimate success of the firm will be contingent on the implementation. The adoption of new technologies has always presented challenges for managers, employees, and organizations in general. As the advent of mass production in the assembly line and more recent models of flexible specialization required planners and workers alike to adapt to and exploit new ways of interacting and organizing the productive process, so too have advances in Information Technology (IT). The three key obstacles: employee resistance, insufficient management support, and inadequate resources explain the major part of difficulties in implementing of new technology. These new technologies offer great benefits for public and private firms, but when a new technology is implemented the organization faces a new and sometimes unexpected problem: employees resist the new technology. The consequences can be severe - experienced specialists may quit or retire because they don't want to adjust to new technologies and, the remaining staff may work more slowly and less efficiently. In this paper we will examine employee and organizational reactions to technical change in both manufacturing and information management sectors, discuss the findings of previous studies, and identify ways for organizations to deal with the employee-oriented challenges of change.