Silos, mousetraps, and islands
a chronicle of information systems in organizations
objectives develop sense of context for:
organizations information technology information systems
describe some of advances and failures of the old context
why organize? division of labor
manage complexity achieve mastery reduce switching costs reduce training costs increase scalability
A single, unified task…
…naturally divides into subtasks
specialization & control
resulting in task specialization
and increased need for control
coordinating mechanisms mutual adjustment direct supervision standardization of tasks standardization of outputs standardization of skills
Mintzberg, 1979
3 PEOPLE = 3 CHANNELS
6 PEOPLE = 6 CHANNELS???
6 PEOPLE = 15 CHANNELS
12 PEOPLE = ???
functional organization
divisionalized form
Mintzberg’s formstrategic
apex
operating core
middleline support
stafftechno-
structure
the flow of formal authority
the flow of regulated activity
the flow of informal communication
set of work constellations
an organizational mess
failure to integrate focus on task and individual over process and
team grouping by function discourages lacks built-in mechanism for coordinating
process flows coordination problems rise to level to far from
origin loss of big picture; overall performance hard
to track
Moore’s Law1995
10K
100K
1M
10Mtransistors500
25
1.0
0.1
mips
1975 19851980 1990
40048080
808680286
8038680486
Merced
Pentium
generations 1st – vacuum tubes 2nd – transistors 3rd – integrated circuits 4th – large-scale integration
failure to communicate connectivity is more than technical
issue organizational inertia and legacy
systems standards cut both ways responsiveness is remote
connectivity / responsivenessre
spon
sive
ness
/ us
abili
ty
mainframe PC / LAN Internet
IS management eras Era I – the glass house; regulated
monopoly; focus on efficiency & productivity
Era II – proliferation of PCs; free market; focus on individual & group effectiveness
Era III – network is computer; ubiquity; focus on integration & value creation
Applegate et al, 1999
classification of ISstrategic
apex
operating core
middleline support
stafftechno-
structure
executive IS
geographic IS
decision support
factoryautomation
(CIM)
artificial intelligence
transaction processing
failure to allocate imbalance in distribution:
centralize/decentralize duplication of data in functional IS technical divide
summary developed sense of context for:
organizations information technology information systems
described some of advances and failures of the old context
Top Related