Page 9 - DMGT505_MANAGEMENT_INFORMATION_SYSTEM

Management Information Systems
Notes
4 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
Emergence of the Global Economy
Next time you purchase a product, any product, look at the fine print and see where it’s made. It
could be China, or the Philippines, or India, or even USA. You can disagree with many
manufacturing jobs that are being moved from other U.S. to foreign countries. But look at the
vast number of jobs that are being created in this country. Maybe they aren’t the traditional
factory jobs we’re used to. In fact, many of our new jobs are in the information industry. Many
of them service entirely new markets that didn’t exist just a few years ago. There was no position
called “Webmaster” in 1991 because the Web didn’t exist. But now, that particular job category
is one of the fastest growing in the overseas. The global economy I am talking about is being
made possible by technology. And that’s why it’s so important that you understand how to use
Information Systems Technology instead of just computer technology.
Transformation of the Business Enterprise
You can’t help but know about the entire job cuts occurring in our country. It seems like every
week we hear about thousands and thousands of people losing their jobs. Back in the 80s most of
the job losses were in the blue-collar sector. In the 90s it seems many of the cuts were being made
in the white collar, management jobs. Why? Think about it. Technology, to a large extent, has
driven organizations to change the way they operate and that includes the way they manage.
We’re going to take an in-depth look at how organizations work and how they’ve been
transformed by technology.
But it isn’t always bad! You just have to ask yourself this question: “With all the job losses in the
last few years, many driven by technological changes, why has the Indian unemployment rate
dropped to it’s lowest in decades and remained so low?”
Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. An information system differs from other kinds of systems in that its objective is to
monitor/document the operations of some other system, which we can call a .....................
........................... system.
2. Information Technology is ........................... the basics of business, customer service,
operations, product and market strategies, and distribution are heavily, or sometimes
even entirely, dependent on IT.
1.2 Digital Convergence
Digital convergence is an approach by which all types of media and communication will be
digitized allowing them to be used through a single worldwide network. The speed and
computing capacity of technology continues to advance at dizzying speeds and in ways we can
hardly imagine.
1.2.1 Interactive Multimedia
One trend highly touted by the experts is that of the “information appliance.” Do we need to
have a separate device for watching television, another one for listening to music, a different
one called a telephone, and yet a whole separate device for computing? Some people say we can
do all of that with one central appliance with a variety of input and output devices.