Data and Information
Information: data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings.
Data: streams of raw facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical environment BEFORE they have been organized and arranged into a form that people can understand and use.
Workshop 1.1
Data vs Information
Functions of an Information System
An information system contains information about an organization and its surrounding environment. Three basic activities— input, processing, and output— produce the information organizations need. Feedback is output returned to appropriate people or activities in the organization to evaluate and refine the input. Environmental actors, such as customers, suppliers, competitors, stockholders, and regulatory agencies, interact with the organization and its information systems.
Computer-based IS
● Computer-based information system
● use computer technology to process raw data into meaningful information.
● What is the difference between a computer, a computer program and an information system?
● Electronic computers and related software programs are the technical foundation, the tools and materials, of modern information systems.
● Computers: provide the equipment for storing and processing information.
● Computer programs, or software: sets of operating instructions that direct and control computer processing.
● Knowing how computers and computer programs work is important in designing solutions to organizational problems, but computers are only part of an information system.
Building A House?
A house is an appropriate analogy.
– Houses are built with hammers, nails, and wood, but these do not make a house.
– The architecture, design, setting, landscaping, and all of the decisions that lead to the creation of these features are part of the house and are crucial for solving the problem of putting a roof over one’s head. Computers and programs are the hammer, nails, and lumber of computer-based information systems, but alone they cannot produce the information a particular organization needs.
To understand information systems, you must understand the problems they are designed to solve, their architectural and design elements, and the organizational processes that lead to these solutions.
Computer, IS, and OIS
Information systems literacy
– encompasses an understanding of the people and organizational dimensions of systems as well as the technical dimensions of systems
– includes a behavioral as well as a technical approach to studying information systems.
Computer literacy
– focuses primarily on knowledge of information technology.
Organization Information Systems (OIS)
– tries to achieve this broader information systems literacy.
– deals with behavioral issues as well as technical issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of information systems used by managers and employees in the organizationn.
Dimensions Of Information Systems
Using information systems effectively requires an understanding of the organization, people, and information technology shaping the systems.
An information system provides a solution to important business problems or challenges facing the firm.
Organization
Organizations Structure:
– A structure that is composed of different levels and specialties
– organized as a hierarchy, or a pyramid structure, of rising authority and responsibility.
– The upper levels of the hierarchy consist of managerial, professional, and technical employees,
– The lower levels consist of operational personnel. Business Functions:
– sales and marketing
– manufacturing and production – finance and accounting – human resources.
Organization
Business Processes:
– logically related tasks and behaviors for accomplishing work such as developing a new product, fulfilling an order, or hiring a new employee, including formal rules that have been developed over a long time for accomplishing tasks.
Culture:
– fundamental set of assumptions, values, and ways of doing things, that has been accepted by most of its members.
Conflict:
– the basis for organizational politics.
People
People are the only ones capable of business problem solving and converting information technology into useful business solutions.
– For instance, a call center that provides help to customers using an advanced customer relationship management system is useless if employees are not adequately trained to deal with customers, find solutions to their problems, and leave the customer feeling that the company cares for them.
Information systems are useless without skilled people to build and maintain them, and without people who can understand how to use the information in a system to achieve business objectives.
The job of managers is
– to make sense out of the many situations faced by organizations, make decisions, and formulate action plans to solve organizational problems.
– perceive business challenges in the environment; they set the organizational strategy for responding to those challenges; and they allocate the human and financial resources to coordinate the work and achieve success.
– create new products and services and even re-create the organization from time to time.
Technology
Computer hardware
– the physical equipment used for input, processing, and output activities in an information system. It consists of the following: computers of various sizes and shapes; various input, output, and storage devices; and telecommunications devices that link computers together. Computer software
– the detailed, preprogrammed instructions that control and coordinate the computer hardware components in an information system. Chapter 4 describes the contemporary software and hardware platforms used by firms today in greater detail.
Data management technology
– the software governing the organization of data on physical storage media.
Networking and telecommunications technology
– both physical devices and software, links the various pieces of hardware and transfers data from one physical location to another.
Technology
Internet
– a global “network of networks” that uses universal standards to connect millions of different networks in over 200 countries around the world.
Intranets
– Internal corporate networks based on Internet technology, providing the connectivity to link different systems and networks within the firm.
Extranets
– Private intranets extended to authorized users outside the organizations .Firms use such networks to coordinate their activities with other firms for making purchases, collaborating on design, and performing other interorganizational work. The IT infrastructure
– provides the foundation, or platform, on which the firm can build its specific information systems.
A Business Problem-Solving Approach
During implementation and thereafter, the outcome must be continually measured and the information about how well the solution is working is fed back to the problem solvers.
In this way, the identification of the problem can change over time, solutions can be changed, and new choices made, all based on experience.
Problem Identification
Critical Thinking
The sustained suspension of judgment with an awareness of multiple perspectives and alternatives.
– Maintaining doubt and suspending judgment
– Being aware of different perspectives
– Testing alternatives and letting experience guide
– Being aware of organizational and personal limitations