Features of organizations include the organization's culture, politics, and structure. A new information system might be resisted by end users or by managers for political reasons, because they are concerned about the political changes the system implies. For example, a new system might lessen the authority of a manager in overseeing the employees, and he or she may not want to relinquish this power. A new information system might challenge the organization's culture and be resisted for this reason. For example, an information system might allow students at a university to take self-managed courses, while the university's basic cultural assumptions include the concept that professors are the purveyors of knowledge. An information system, by allowing the distribution of knowledge, may be better used in a company with a flatter organization. A company with a highly stratified hierarchy may have difficulty adjusting its business processes and structures to an information system that does not follow the same business hierarchy of information.
