Internal Disagreement and Disruptive Technologies

This paper models the adoption by established firms of technologies that are internally disruptive in that different parts of an organization stand to lose or gain from adoption. When agents disagree with a decision they impose costs on the firm. The paper shows that any resistance to change this yields is necessarily accompanied by others aggrieved should change not occur. Thus, the firm cannot avoid disagreement costs regardless of whether they adopt the technology or not. In some cases, depending on their ability to impose costs, such firms may be more likely to adopt technologies as a result of internal disagreement.