Week 1 Flashcards
1
Q
Why are businesses using technology?
A
- Respond to fast-changing customer demand
- Reduce inventory
- Achieve higher levels of operational efficiency
2
Q
What’s new in management information systems?
A
- IT innovations
- E-commerce expansion
- Management changes (can delegate work from a different place via WhatsApp ect)
- New business models (e.g: Netflix)
- Changes in firm and organization (employees taking on multiple tasks and collaborating)
3
Q
IT innovation examples
A
- The emergence of cloud computing
- Big data and the Internet of Things (IoT)
- Mobile digital business platform
- Business Analytics
- Machine learning systems
- The use of social networks by managers to achieve business objectives
4
Q
Globalization challenges
A
Reduced the economic and cultural advantages of developed countries
5
Q
Globalization opportunities
A
- Firms producing on a global scale can find low-cost suppliers
- Reduced the costs of operating and transacting on a global scale
- Buyers have 24/7 access to quality information and prices
6
Q
What is a digital firm?
A
A digital firm is one in which the organization’s relationships with suppliers, customers, and employees are digitally enabled and mediated.
7
Q
What is a business process?
A
Business processes are a set of logically related tasks and behaviors that organizations develop over time to produce specific business results and the unique manner in which these activities are organized and coordinated.
8
Q
Examples of business processes
A
Developing a new product, hiring an employee, fulfilling orders, and creating a market plan.
9
Q
Key corporate assets
A
- Intellectual property
- Financial assets
- Core competencies
- Human resources
10
Q
What objectives depend on the kind and quality of info systems in an organization?
A
- increasing market share
- becoming a high-quality, low-cost producer
- increasing employee productivity
- developing new products
11
Q
Why do business firms invest in information systems?
A
To achieve strategic objectives:
- operational exellence
- new products, services, and business models
- supplier and customer intimacy
- improved decision-making
- survival
- competitive advantage
12
Q
Operational Exellence
A
Coupled with business practices and management behavior, information systems are the most important tool to achieve higher productivity, and in turn, profitability.
13
Q
What is a business model?
A
It describes how a company produces, sells and delivers products to create profit.
14
Q
Customer and supplier intimacy
A
Knowing customer needs and serving those well leads to repurchase.
The more a business engages its suppliers the better these suppliers can provide vital inputs at a low cost.
15
Q
Improved decision-making
A
Using real-time data from the marketplace when making decisions leads to more informed decisions and better outcomes.
16
Q
Competitive advantage
A
Doing things better than your competitors, charging less for superior products, and responding faster to customers and suppliers.
17
Q
Survival
A
Information systems become a necessity driven by industry-level changes.
18
Q
What is an information system?
A
Information systems can be defined as a set of interrelated components that collect, retrieve, process, store, and distribute information to support decision-making and control in an organization. They can also help managers and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects, and create new products.
19
Q
Information
A
Refers to data that has been shaped in a form that is meaningful and useful.
20
Q
Data
A
Streams of raw information from the organization or the physical environment that haven’t been arranged in a way that others can use or understand.
21
Q
Three functions of an information system
A
- Input: captures raw data from within the organization or from its external environment
- Processing: converts this raw data into meaningful information
- Output: transfers the processed data to the people who will use it or the activities for which it will be used.
22
Q
Feedback
A
Output that is returned to the members of the organization to help them evaluate or correct the input stage.
23
Q
Distinction between computer and computer program
A
- Computers and related software programs are the foundation of modern information systems.
- Computers are the equipment for processing and storing information.
- Computer programs or software are sets of operating instructions that direct and control computer processing.
24
Q
What is information systems literacy?
A
A broader understanding of information systems encompasses an understanding of the management, organizational, and technical dimensions of systems.
25
What is computer literacy?
Knowledge of information technology.
26
Management Information System (MIS)
Focuses on IS literacy, and deals with behavioral and technical issues of IS.
27
Key elements of an organization
- Its people
- culture
- business processes
- structure
- politics
28
Firm hierarchy
- Upper levels: managerial, professional, technical employees
- Lower levels: operational personnel
29
Senior management
Long-term strategic decisions about products and services, ensure financial performance
30
Middle management
Carries out the plans and programs of senior management.
31
Knowledge workers
Engineers, scientists, and architects design the product and create new knowledge for the firm.
32
Data workers
Secretaries or clerks, assist with scheduling and communication.
33
Service workers
Produce and deliver the products
34
Business functions
- Sales and marketing: Selling the firm's products
- Manufacturing and production: Producing and delivering products
- Finance and accounting: Managing the firm's financial assets and keeping financial records
- Human resources: Attracting, developing, and maintaining the firm's labor force.
35
Forms of information technology
- Computer hardware: physical equipment used for input, processing, and output.
- Computer software: detailed, programmed instructions that coordinate computer hardware in an information system.
- Data management technology: software governing the organization of data on physical storage media.
- Networking and telecommunication systems: both physical devices and software, link the various devices together and transfer data from one location to the other.
36
Largest network in the world
The most widely used and largest network is the internet, and has created a new technology platform on which to build new products and business models. The Internet can be used internally in a firm to link different systems and networks.
37
Intranets
Internal corporate networks based on internet technology.
38
Extranets
Private intranets extended to authorized users outside the organization.
39
What are extranets used for?
To collaborate with other organizations, on product design and other internal organizational work.
40
What is the World Wide Web?
WWW is a service that uses universally accepted standards for formatting, storing, retrieving, and displaying information in a page format on the internet.
41
What determines the value of an information system?
The value of an information system for a business is determined by the extent to which the system will lead to better management decisions, more efficient business processes, and increased firm profitability.
42
What does an information system represent?
An information system represents an organizational or management solution based on information technology, to a challenge or problem posed by the environment.
43
Define complementary assets
Complementary assets are those assets required to derive value from a primary investment
44
What do complementary assets culture values?
- efficiency and effectiveness
- an appropriate business model
- efficient business processes
- decentralization of authority
- distributed decision rights
- a strong information system development team
45
Technical Approach
The technical approach emphasizes mathematical models to study information systems and the physical technology and formal capabilities of these systems.
The disciplines that contribute to this: are computer science, management science, and operations research.
46
Behavioral Approach
The behavioral approach concentrates on changes in attitude, management organizational policy, and behavior.
47
Examples of failed ethical judgements by senior managers
- Wells Fargo (2018): opening false accounts, making auto loan customers purchase unneeded insurance, manipulating terms of mortgages. ($2.5 billion)
- Hedge fund Deerfield Management: used confidential government information about financing to trade shares in healthcare companies
- General Motors (2015): Sold cars with faulty ignition that led to many deaths
- Takata Corporation: faulty airbags ($1 billion)
- GlaxoSmithKLine LLC (2012): unlawful promotion of prescription drugs, failure to report safety data, false price reporting. ($3 billion)
- Bank of America: defrauding government-backed mortgage agencies by churning out loans at a rapid pace. ($1 billion)
48
Define Ethics
Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behavior.
49
Moral dimensions of the information age
1. Information rights and obligations
2. Property rights and obligations
3. Accountability and control
4. Quality of life
5. System quality
50
Key technological trends that raise ethical issues
- Computing power doubles every 18 months: more org. depend on computers for critical operations making them more vulnerable to computer fails
- Data storage costs decline rapidly: organizations can easily maintain detailed info about you
- Data analysis advances: large-scale population surveillance is enabled
- Networking advances: data can be transferred easily. Access to data becomes difficult to control
- Mobile device growt impact: Individual cell phones may be tracked without user consent or knowledge.
51
What is profiling?
The use of computers to combine data from different sources to create a digital dossier on detailed information about individuals.
52
NORA
Non-obvious relationship awareness is a data analysis technology. NORA can take information about people from different sources and try to find link between them to identify criminals or terrorists. ( watch lists, incident and arrest systems, telephone records, customer transaction systems, human resource systems)->name, match, merge-> Nora alerts
53
What is NORA valuable for?
NORA is a valuable tool for homeland security, but does have privacy implications because it provides such a detailed picture of the activites of a single person.
54
Basic concepts for ethics
- Responsibilty
- Accountability: institutions that don't have systems to find who took action can't appeal to ethial action
- Liability: takes responsibility a step further including law
- Due process: a process in which laws are known and understood, and ability exists to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly
55
Ethical Analysis
1. Identify and describe the facts clearly.
2. Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher order values involved.
3. Identify the stakeholders.
4. Identify the options you can reasonably take.
5. Identify the potential consequences of your options.
56
Prominent ethical principles
1. The Golden Rule: one should do unto other what they would have them do unto you.
2. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative: If an action is not right for everyone, it is not right for anyone.
3. The slippery slope rule: if an action cannot be taken repeatedly it shouldn't be taken at all
4. The utitlitarian rule: one must take the action that achieves higher value
5. The risk aversion principle: one must take the action with the lowest prossible cost.
6. The no free lunch rules: one should assume virtually that all other tangible and intangible object are owned by someone else unless stated otherwise.
57
what are codes of ethics?
Codes of ethics are promises by proffesionals to regulate themselves in the general interest of society.
58
Privacy
Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone without surveillence or interference from other individuals or organizations including the state.
59
What is the FIP?
Most American and European privacy law is based on a regime called Fair Information Practices, which is a set of principles governing the collection and use of information on individuals.
60
Where are FIP principles based?
FIP principles are based on a concept of mutuality between the individual and the record keeper. The individual has intrest in a transaction and the record keeper requires information about the individual to support the transaction.
61
Federal Trade Comission priciples:
- Notice/awareness: websites must disclose info practices before collecting data
- Access/participation: consumers should be able to review and contest the accuracy and completeness of data collected on them in a timely inexpensive manner.
- Security: data collectors must ensure that info is safe from unauthorized use.
- Enforcement: a mechanism must be in place to ensure FIP principles. (self-regulation, legistlation, federal statutes and regulations)
62
Informed consent
Consent given with knowledge of all facts needed to make a rational decision.
63
EU Directive on Data Protection
- Infromed consent must be provided
- Prohibited the transfer of peronal data to countries such as the US, that don't have similar privacy protection regulations.
- 2009 European Parliament developed new rules concerning the use of third party cookies: Visitors give explicit consent, websistes have highly visible warnings on their page for third-party cookies.
- European Commisision and the US department of commerce devloped a safe habour framework for US firms-> US firms would be able to use personal data from EU countries if they developed privacy protection policies that met EU standards.
- 2015 Changing safe harbour and the data protection directive to GDPR
- 2016 Companies are required to delete personal data once it doesn't serve the purpose for which it was collected
64
Safe harbour
A safe harbour is a private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objective of government regulator and legistlation but does not involve government regulations or enforcement.
65
GDPR
General Data Protection Regulation applies to any firm operating in the EU. Requires unambiguous consent to use data for purposes like tracking individuals across the web, and limits the use of data for purposes other than those for which it was collected. GDPR strengthens the right to be forgotten by allowing individuals to remove personal data from social platforms and to prevent such companies for collecting any new information.
66
Cookies
Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits websites. They identify the users web browser software and track visits to the website, so the site can customize its content for each visitor's interest. Cookies don't obtain name and address but if a person has registered at a website that information can be combined.
67
Web-beacon
Tiny software programs that keep a record of users' online click streams.
68
Other spyware
Other spyware can secretely install itself in a users' computer by piggybacking on larger application, and once installed the spyware calls out to websites to send unsolicited ads and banners and it can report the user's movement on the internet to other computers.
69
Opt-out
Permits the collection of personal information until the consumer specifically requests the data not to be collected.
70
Opt-in
Business is prohibited from collecting any personal information unless the consumer specifically takes action to approve information collection and use.
71
Technical solutions
Technologies that can protect user privacy when interacting with websites, many of which are encrypting emails, making emails or surfing activites appear anonymous, for preventing clients computers from accepting cookies, detecting and eleminating spyware. Usualy not very efficient.
72
Intellectual property
Tangible or intangible product of the mind created by individuals or corporations.
73
Copyright
A statutory grant that protects creators of iintellectual property from having their work stolen up to 70 year after their death.
- When it's corporate owned 95 years
- Includes books, paintings, lectures dramas, music ect
- Encourage creativity and authorship by ensuring that creative people receive financial and other benefits from their work.
74
Patent
Grant the owner a monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years.
- Creators of new machines/ideas get the financial reward and make a widespread use of it
- The grat of patenting is determined by the US Patent & Trademark office and relies on court rulings
- Key concepts: Originality, Novelty and Invention
- Strength: grants a monopoly
- Difficulty: passing the criteria of orginiality and novelty and years of waiting to get protection
75
Trademark
Marks, symbols and imagies used to distinguish products in the marketplace.
- Protects customers so they get what they paid for and investments the firm has made to put the prduct on the market.
- Violation when other firms appropriate or pirate the marks of a competing firm
- Infringiment lso when firms dilute the mark of another firm's marks by weakening the connection between the mark and the product.
76
Trade secrets
Any intellectual work product used for a business process, provided that it's not based on info in the public domain.
77
DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 provides some copyright protection and implemented a World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty which makes it illegal to circumvent technology based protection of copyrighted materials.
78
ISP
Internet service providers are required to take down sites of copyright infringers which they are hosting when they are notified of the problem.
79
Who are Microsoft and other Major software represented by?
They are represented by the Software and Information Industry Association, which lobbies for new laws or enforcement of actual laws for intellectual property protection.
80
Principal sources of poor system performance
- software bugs or errors
- hardware failures caused by natural or other causes
- poor input data quality
81
What is the most common cause of business system failures?
It is data quality as few companies routinely measure the quality of their data, but individual organizations report data error rates ranging from 0.5 to 30%.
82
Computer crime
Computer crime is the commission of illegal acts by using a computer or against a computer system.
83
List of cybercrime
- phishing
- malware
- network interruption
- denial of service attacks
- spyware
84
Computer abuse
Computer abuse is the commission of actions that may not be illegal but are considered unethical. (scams, identity, and financial theft through scams)
85
What could a digital divide do?
This digital divide can lead to a society of information haves, who are skilled and computer-literate, vs a large group of information have-nots, who are computer illiterate and unskilled.
86
RSI
A common occupational disease today is Repetitive stress injury which occurs when muscles are formed through repetitive actions with high impact loads or thousands of repetitive actions with low impact loads.
87
What is the largest source of RSI?
Computer keyboards
88
What is the most common type of computer-related RSI?
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in which pressure on the median nerve through the wrist's bony structure produces pain.
89
How to avoid RSI?
- Designing workstations for a neutral wrist position, proper monitor stands, and footrests all contribute to proper posture.
- Frequent rest breaks and rotation of employees.
90
CVS
Computer vision syndrome refers to any eye strain related to computer display screen use.
91
