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Discussion Questions:
- T
he lecture discussed the history of information technologies and
management before the invention of the computer. Specific technologies
included file cabinets, typewriters, dictating machines, etc. What
similarities do you see in the use made by business of these older
technologies (pick one or two specific ones) and today's computerized
information systems.
We also saw that the concepts of system and efficiency were very powerful
in selling these earlier technologies. Why were these such popular sales
pitches? What might firms have had to do, apart from just buying the machines,
to realize these benefits. (Use your common sense, and the points raised in
the textbook, as well as the lecture).
How can Information Technology alter an existing work system? Think about
work systems that you have been exposed to and how IT has changed the system.
As an example, the book describes the pizza store work system. In order to
fully answer this question, be prepared to define the work system, its
business processes and its components (systems and subsystems).
According to the book, Information Technology has had a long history of
having unrealistic expectation placed upon the solutions that it can provide.
Identify examples that you have used of technologies or products that didn't
exactly live up to the surrounding hype. Be able to discuss what your
expectations were and what the reality was.
You heard in class about Professor Haigh's problems in getting an ID card
and a projector for the class. The book identifies the integration of IT
systems as one of the major obstacles for IT. It also discusses the problems
of information being trapped in "functional silos" while work processes have
to cross them. Using your personal experience of IU (or another large
organization) as an example, identify processes that cross business and
functional areas and IT systems that lack the ability to cross these gaps.
Supplemental Readings:
-
Early
office technology is discussed in Yates, JoAnne. "Business Use of Information
and Technology During the Industrial Age." In A Nation Transformed by
Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to
the Present, edited by Alfred D. Chandler and James W. Cortada. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
- The material on early office management is taken from my own
unpublished paper "Engineering the Progressive Office: Technical Claims to
Administrative Authority, 1917-1931" which
can be read online.
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