What could be the alternative solutions to the problems? OPENING CASETom Walters was watching the 2018 Super Bowl with friends and noticed players,coaches, and referees using tablets to review plays. It reminded him of a bad experiencehe had over ten years ago when he tried to convince his college to require students to usetablets. Tom had accepted a new position as the Director of Information Technology athis small, private college after having been a respected faculty member for 15 years. Thecollege offered a variety of programs in the liberal arts and professional areas. Enrollmentincluded 1,500 full-time traditional students and about 1,000 working adults whoattended evening programs. Like other institutions of higher learning, the use of IT at thecollege had grown tremendously, but only a few classrooms on campus had computersfor the instructors and students, and most other classrooms had only instructor stationsand projection systems. Tom knew that several colleges throughout the country requirethat all students lease or own laptops or tablets and that these colleges incorporatetechnology into most courses.This idea fascinated him at the time. He and two other members of the ITdepartment visited a local college that had required all students to lease laptops forthe past three years, and they were very impressed with what they saw and heard.Because tablets were becoming more popular, they thought it would make moresense to require tablets instead of laptops. Tom had heard how easy it was for facultymembers to create interactive course materials that would run on tablets; thesematerials also could help reduce the cost of textbooks, a concern expressed by manystudents. Tom and his staff developed plans to start requiring students either to leaseor purchase tablets at their college starting the next academic year.Tom sent an e-mail to all faculty and staff that September briefly describing hisplans. He did not get much response, however, until the February faculty meeting. As hedescribed some of the details of his plan, the chairs of the History, English, Philosophy,and Economics departments all voiced opposition to the idea. They eloquently statedthat the college was not a technical training school and that they did not have time towrite their own course materials to run on tablets. They liked the books they used, andstudents could already buy books in an electronic format, but most preferred the printversions. Members of the Computer Science department voiced their concern that almostall of their students already had state-of-the art laptops and would not want to pay amandatory fee to lease less-powerful tablets. The director of the adult education programexpressed her concern that many adult-education students would balk at an increasein fees or required technology. Tom was in shock to hear his colleagues' responses,especially after he and his staff had spent a lot of time planning how to implement tabletsat their campus. He remembered being totally confused at the time due to his lack ofunderstanding of organizational change. He wondered how the National Football Leaguehandled their implementation of tablets.

Question

Accepted Answer

Change is constant at every organization and most of the time good for the growth. However,…