How Information Systems Came to Rule the World

And Other Essays

Burt Swanson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000548280
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Computer Science

This book offers a fresh perspective on information systems, a field of study and practice currently undergoing substantial upheaval, even as it expands rapidly and widely with new technologies and applications.

Mapping the field as it has developed, the author firmly establishes the under-recognized importance of the field, and grounds it firmly in the subject's history. He argues against the view of enthusiasts who believe that the field has somehow moved "beyond information systems" to something more exotic and offers a short and compelling manifesto on behalf of the field and its future.

Offering a comprehensive insight into the significance of the information systems field, this book will appeal primarily to scholars and practitioners working in information systems, management, communication studies, technology studies, and related areas.

1Quo Vadis, Information Systems?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003252344-1

What are information systems and where are we going with them? In this introductory chapter, I briefly summarize what information systems are all about, as I see it, and how this has come to be, and what the issues are as we face the future. Much of what follows will be familiar to scholars and practitioners in the IS field. But, for the general reader, I hope this background will be helpful. Subsequent chapters address issues introduced here.

As we shall view it, an information system is commonly a computer-based system for providing information to an organization to help guide its actions. To say that an IS is computer-based is not to say that it is computer-confined, as will be emphasized. To say that it provides information to an organization leaves unsaid for the moment how it does so. To say that it helps to guide organizational actions does explicate the rationale for its existence.¹

Typically, an information system features people working interactively with computers to accomplish a particular task. As seen here, both people and machines are informed through these interactions. Often, the information provided serves to coordinate workers’ specialized but necessarily collective efforts. Where associated decisions are routine and highly structured, they are sometimes relegated to the machine. Where not, they are often left to the workers. The varieties of information systems are many, reflecting the diversity of organizations and tasks to be accomplished. A typical large business firm has information systems to support its accounting and finance, operations, supply chain management, sales and marketing, customer service, human resource management, and research and development. But information systems are found everywhere, in organizations of all kinds and sizes, public as well as private.²

The technical heart of any information system, that which is computer-driven, consists of application code and associated data. The term “data processing” describes in a nutshell what the computer does when the code is executed. But the larger notion of an IS incorporates not only such data processing, but also the acquisition of the data, and the employment of outputs in whatever form to guide or effect actions by either humans or machines. The acquisition and employment processes may be automated or not, according to the design of the IS.³

In what follows, I elaborate. I first discuss the origins of information systems in the field of practice. I then review the basic types of information systems as commonly found. I then touch upon their recent extensions, which are varied and many. Finally, I discuss their futures and set the stage for the chapters to follow.

Origins

Modern information systems emerged with the rise and spread of digital computing in the 1950s, although punched card tabulating equipment was in use for data processing in organizations before then. The stored-program computer itself was initially viewed as a high-powered calculating device, suitable primarily for numerical and other sophisticated analyses. Such “scientific computing” was distinguished from what was termed “electronic data processing” (EDP), which emerged about the same time to support the more prosaic work of business, such as accounting. In the 1960s, computers came to be designed and marketed specifically for business purposes, eventually displacing the tabulating equipment. Notably, a high-level programming language for business applications, Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL), was also developed, which emphasized data and file structures, and deemphasized the computational features found in FORmula TRANslation (FORTRAN), the language most commonly used in scientific computing. COBOL ultimately became the most widely used programming language for the development of application software for information systems on mainframe computers. As much of this code remains in use, the language persists even today.⁴

Beyond business-oriented application software, the emergence of data base technology in the late 1960s was central to the rapid rise and spread of large-scale information systems among firms. A data base is an organized collection of related data files. A data base management system (DBMS) is system software that enables data bases to be managed as integrated wholes, where relationships among files are clearly delineated. With a DBMS, data can be defined via a data dictionary and managed separately from the different software which access it. The articulation of the relational data model as a foundation for data bases spurred the development of relational data bases in the 1970s, which came to dominate the field. Today, Oracle provides the leading relational data base software for medium to large firms, while Microsoft’s Access is well established among small businesses.⁵

Together, application software and a related data base have come to form the digital content around which any modern information system is now built. Typically, the application software incorporates the “business rules” to be followed, while the data base incorporates the “business facts” that shape the data processing, for instance, in processing a business payroll, or in selling seats to a concert, or in managing the circulation of a library’s holdings, or in almost any other endeavor in which carefully informed organizational actions are routinely taken. While the business facts and data base will typically be specific to the enterprise, the business rules and application software may be either specific or generic, i.e., commonly used, as with accounting systems that incorporate professionally mandated rules and principles. Where the business rules and application software is specific to the organization, it may underpin the unique capabilities of the enterprise, in which case it may be strategic. Today, people in a wide variety of occupations and in organizations large and small are likely to work interactively with information systems to accomplish much of their work. Through networks and the Web and Internet, in particular, and through the use of laptops and mobile devices they engage in this “human-computer interaction” (HCI) from wherever they happen to be and at whatever times they choose or are called upon to be available.⁶

Types

Information systems come in a wide variety, reflecting the diversity in the organizations that employ them. Among business firms, some information systems will be characteristic of the industry, in particular, as with process control systems in chemical and refining enterprises, or electronic funds transfer (EFT) systems in banks and other financial services firms. However, certain basic types are found in enterprises of all kinds, reflecting both their historical origins based in then-new technologies and the nature of organization itself. These include transaction-processing systems, management information systems (MIS), decision support systems (DSS), group support systems, and enterprise systems. These are not pure types; actual systems may combine features of two or more basic types.⁷

Transaction-Processing Systems

Transaction-processing systems support an enterprise in its transactions with others, such as customers, suppliers, and employees. Every business transaction involves an exchange of goods, services, money, and information in some combination between the parties. Transaction-processing systems exist to ensure the integrity of these transactions. In today’s world, each time a consumer makes a purchase with a credit card, withdraws cash from an account, or books an airline ticket, the consumer likely engages the other party’s transaction-processing systems. Increasingly, a consumer does this directly, by positioning a bank card or smart phone at a point-of-sale (POS) device or employing an automated teller machine (ATM) or initiating a purchase from the Web.⁸

Beyond their primary function, transaction-processing systems also enable a business to coordinate its internal operations among units, especially in the making of goods, where parts are withdrawn from inventory and a manufactured item is assembled in a series of operations, and the final product eventually distributed from one location to another, for instance. Here and elsewhere, transaction-processing systems are basically event-driven, and are often engaged to authorize formal actions, such as accepting a customer order or authorizing a credit purchase. The business rules for such data processing may be quite sophisticated, as in credit authorization which incorporates rules aimed at fraud detection, for instance. The data pertaining to these events will ultimately serve to update a data base that is typically drawn upon in processing and is relied upon to give the current status of the organization’s affairs. Where the data base is immediately updated as events happen, the system is said to operate in “real time.” In the case of firms, basic transaction data will further feed the accounting systems that provide a formal financial picture of the ongoing business.

Where firms do business with each other, for instance, within a supply chain, their transaction-processing systems are also sometimes tied together by means of an interorganizational system that enables them to communicate directly with each other. For such machine-to-machine communication, this necessitates resolution of disparities in how the data themselves are defined by the communicating parties. The interorganizational system may be based on electronic data interchange (EDI) arrangements or increasingly on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) standards for exchange over the Web. The concept of Web services envisions a world of business services and firm transactions seamlessly tied together via standards for business data of all kinds.⁹

Management Information Systems

Management information systems support an organization’s hierarchical structure and are targeted to management at all levels. MIS aim to support every manager’s need to know within his or her scope of responsibility, typically by extracting important performance information from data gathered from the organization’s transaction-processing and operational systems and presenting it efficiently in tabular or graphical form. The concept of an MIS emerged in the 1960s and signaled an important transition in information systems, from traditional EDP to systems that served more sophisticated purposes. In the United States, both practiti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Quo Vadis, Information Systems?
• 2 Why Do Firms Have Information Systems?
• 3 What Information Is Provided by Information Systems?
• 4 Why Is Everyone Now An Information System User?
• 5 How Did Information Systems Come to Rule the World?
• 6 How Do Human Practices Change with Information Systems?
• 7 How Can Information Systems Make a Better World?
• Index