SUMMARY ASSIGNMENT ON MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
CHAPTERS 4 AND 6
INTRODUCTION
This summary paper covers chapters 4 and 6 of the book Managing Information Systems
(Managing the Digital Firm), 12th Edition, authored by Kenneth and Jane Laudon. Between the
two chapters there are 76 pages, chapter 4 contains 40 pages and chapter 6 has 36 pages.
Chapter 4 looks broadly on Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems, with sub headings
such as;
Ethical Issues Facing the Use of Technologies for the Aged Community
Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems
Ethics in an Information Society
The Moral Dimensions of Information Systems
Hands – on MIS Projects
Chapter 6 focuses on Foundation of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information
Management also with sub headings as:
Organizing Data in a Traditional File Environment
The Database Approach to Data Management
Using Databases to Improve Business Performance and Decision Making
Managing Data Resource
Hands – on MIS Projects
Generally, the authors began each of the chapters with a case study whereas examples they
cited centered on practices pertaining to the US, Australia, Canada and European countries.
CHAPTER 4
ETHICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS
In the case study preceding the presentation of chapter 4, the authors described the usefulness
of information technology in the health delivery system and improvement of the quality of life
of the aged in Australia. However, ethical issues such as invasion of privacy, leakage of personal
information, socio-cultural issues and computer phobia among the aged pose a challenge to the
system.
The authors pointed out that failed ethical judgment by senior and middle managers leading to
violation of the law could lead to imprisonment. They stressed that ethics is necessary in
information systems since crime is rife and threatens social values. The rise of internet and
electronic commerce calls for ethical measures to ensure privacy and intellectual property. And
this can be achieved through ethic issues management by establishing accountability and to set
standards to safeguard system quality and preserve values.
According to the authors, ethical, social and political issues are quite related. Thus, social
institutions develop rules of behavior supported by laws developed in political sector with
prescribed behaviors and promise sanction for violation. The introduction of new technology
has ripple effects which raise new concerns. In managing these concerns, the authors,
mentioned five moral dimensions that must guide practitioners. They include information rights
and obligation, property rights and obligations, system quality, quality of life and accountability
and control. Moreover, the authors mentioned some four key technology trends that have
raised ethical issues; computer power doubles every 18 months, data storage, advances in data
analysis techniques for large pools of data and advances in networking.
Ethics, according to the authors, is about individual choices. They emphasized on the basic
concepts that underpin ethical analysis of information systems and those who manage it.
Among the baic are responsibility, accountability and liability.
Furthermore, the authors touched on the process of ethical analysis. Firstly is to identify and
describe clearly the facts about who did what, to whom and where, when and how. Secondly,
to define the conflict and identify the higher-order values involved. Thirdly, to identify the
stakeholders, i.e. interest parties or groups and what they want. Fourthly, to identify options
that can be taken and finally to identify the potential consequence of the options. After the
analysis, the ethical principles to use to take decision according to the authors should include
the following;
1. The golden rule – do unto others what you will like them to do unto you.
2. If an action is not for right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone.
3. If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all.
4. Take the action that achieves the value
5. Take action that produces the least harm or potential cost.
6. Assure that all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there
is a specific declaration otherwise
Professional code was also addressed by the authors. According to them, professional codes are
promulgated by association of experts. Professional associations take responsibility of their
members, thereby ensuring that entrants are qualified and competent. They also, establish
codes of ethics which are promises to regulate members’ activities.
On the issue of moral dimensions of information system, the authors, talked about privacy and
freedom in the internet age. Privacy here, refers to individual right to be free from surveillance
and interferences from any quarters. In this case, the authors mentioned a number of laws put
in place in the US and Europe to protect individuals and even children in connection with the
collection and use of information, for instance, the Fair Information Practice (FIP) and Children
Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) among others. They also defined key terms such as
informed consent i.e. consent given with knowledge of all the facts needed to make to make
rational decision, and safe harbor i.e. a private self regulating policy and enforcement
mechanism that meets the objective of government regulations and legislation and not its
regulation and enforcement.
Authors viewed the internet as a real threat to privacy issues. This is because information on
the internet passes through different computer systems. The computer monitor, capture and
store information, these processes occur at blindside of the user. According to the authors,
cookies web beacons and spyware among others are responsible for privacy violations on the
internet.
According to the authors as part of efforts to overcome internet privacy challenges, website
providers such as google, facebook and others have introduced softwares and programmes that
seek to protect the privacy of users. These include, opt-out and opt-in models. There are also
privacy policies such as On-line Privacy Alliance (OPA), Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and
AOL, Yahoo among others. There is also technical solution to the privacy challenges. This is
made possible by new technologies such as encrypting email, email and surfing activities
anonymously. This prevents clients’ computers to accept cookies and they detect and eliminate
spyware. Again, platform for privacy preference, i.e. PʒP enables automatic communication of
privacy policies between e-commerce site and visitors. It also allows websites to publish privacy
policies.
The authors expatiated on property rights which include intellectual property which covers
both tangible and intangible properties created by individuals or organizations. Intellectual
property rights can be protected through three legal traditions; trade secrets, copy rights and
patent. Challenges to protecting intellectual property have heightened due to the proliferation
of electronic net network. To add salt to injury, file sharing services are made easy by Napster,
Grokster, Kazaar among others help locate and swap music files. Authors added that there is
development of mechanisms to sell and distribute materials and intellectual property legally on
the net, i.e. Digital Millennium Copyrights Act (DMCA) and others.
The authors observed that there are accountability, liability and control on computer related
issues. This is achieved through privacy and property laws. They stated that producers of
software and the operators can be held liable for damages because computer software is part
of a machine and if it injure someone physically or economically it is appropriate to hold them
responsible. Another issue of concern is about system quality and data system errors. The
authors noted the principal sources of poor system performances. These include software bugs
and errors, hardware failure caused by natural or other causes and poor input data quality.
The introduction of information technology and systems has negative consequences which
according to the authors are not violation of individual rights or property. But rather a social
costs which are extremely harmful to individuals, society and political institutions in terms of
culture influence. Among some of the effects include failure of information system, loss of
jobs, working beyond the prescribed 8 hours per day, interferences during family vacation,
leisure time and racial and social class cleavages etc.
A section of the chapter was dedicated to interactive sessions where the authors engaged the
learner to monitoring in the workplace and the issue of too much technology. The authors
ended the chapter with a case study on the subject “When Radiation Therapy Kills”
CHAPTER 6
FOUNDATIONS OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: DATABASES AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
A case study on RR Donnelley a book production company based in Chicago, ushered in this
chapter. The crux of the company’s challenge was about its rapid growth through acquisitions
vis-à-vis the poor management of its vast array of data which negatively affected the decision
making process of the company.
The authors talked about accurate, timely and relevant data as essential provisions for decision
making. They also explained that computer system organizes data according to bits, bytes,
fields, records, files and data bases. Problems with traditional file data system include
redundancy and inconsistency, programme data dependence, lack of flexibility, poor security
and lack of data sharing and availability.
Database technology according to the authors neutralizes most problems of traditional file
organization. Database is a collection of data organized to serve many applications efficiently by
centralizing the data and controlling redundant data.
According to the authors, a database management systems (DBMS) enables organizations to
centralize data, manage them efficiently and provide access to the stored data by application
programmes. The authors revealed that DBMS solves the problems of traditional file
environment by reducing the data redundancy and inconsistency by minimizing isolated files in
which the same data are repeated.
The type of DBMS commonly used is relational DBMS which represent data as two-dimensional
tables known as relations. The authors further illustrated in detail how a relational database
organizes data about suppliers and parts. The relational database tables if combined can
conveniently deliver data needed by users. According to the authors three operations are used
to develop sets of data; they include, select, join and project. Object-oriented DBMS another
application in processing data, has the capacity to store more complex types of information.
Database in the cloud, enables cloud computing providers such as Amazon Web services,
Microsoft SQL Azure Database among others offer database management services but have less
functionality compared to their on-premises counterparts.
The authors stressed on the capabilities of DBMS tools for organizing, managing and accessing
information on the database. The key issues revolve on definition language, data dictionary and
manipulation language. Again, DBMS has the capacity for accessing and manipulating
information in the database. The authors explained that data manipulating language allows the
occurrence of these processes. Structured Query Language (SQL) stands out as the most
prominent language of all times.
Creation of a database according to the authors requires both conceptual and physical designs.
The conceptual design is an abstract model of database whilst the physical design shows how
data is arranged. Furthermore, the conceptual process describes how the data elements in the
database are to be grouped. It also identifies redundant data element and groupings of data
elements application programmes among other detailed processes.
For the benefit of high performance and decision making by businesses, the authors stressed
the need for efficient databases which will make available the much needed information on
products and customers. It was noted that data warehouses needed to be established to
synchronize scattered information within an organization. The data warehouse stores current
and historic data to aid decision making processes. Data mart on the other hand, is a subset of
data warehouse were summarized information is kept in separate database for specific users.
Data in the date warehouse and marts are further processed using business intelligence tools to
analyze data to see new patterns, relationships, and insights in connection with decision
making.
The tools for business intelligence include software for database querying and
reporting, tools for multidimensional data analysis and tools for data mining etc. Online
analytical processing (OLAP) enable users to view the same data in different ways using
multiple dimensions. Data mining on the hand is discovery driven. It provides insight into
corporate data that cannot be obtained with OLAP. The type of information gathered from data
mining are associations, sequences, classifications, clusters and forecast, as opined by the
authors.
The authors also stated text mining as a tool available for businesses to analyze email, memos,
call centre transcripts, survey responses and service reports among many others. The tool is
essentially beneficial in extracting key elements from large unstructured data sets. Web mining
on the other hand is useful to businesses to source valuable information for patterns, trends,
and insights in customer behaviors. The authors also in the interactive session of the chapter
touched on what businesses can learn from text mining.
The authors threw more light on the processes underpinning databases and the web. They
emphasized that due to the fact that many back-end databases cannot interpret commands
written in HTML, the web server passes the request for data software that translates HTML
commands into SQL so that they can processed by the DBMS working with the database. In a
client/server environment, the DBMS resides on a dedicated computer called database server.
The issue of establishing business information policy was tackled by the authors. They stressed
on the need for business information to be preserved through policy guidelines designed by a
given business entity. This information policy entails an organization’s rules for sharing,
dissemination, acquiring, standardizing, classifying and inventory information. Data
Administration forms part of the process in data management, it is in reference to specific
policies and procedures through which data can be managed as an organizational resource. This
can be achieved by developing information policy, planning for data, overseeing database
design and dictionary development among others. IBM promoted the term data governance
which seeks to deal with policies and processes for managing the availability, usability, integrity,
and security of the data employed in an organization, with overall objective of complying to
government regulations.
In ensuring data quality, the authors opined that organizations must identify and correct their
faulty data and establish better routines for editing data once their data is in operation. One
mean by achieving this is through data quality audit. A process which involves surveying entire
data files and surveying samples from data files among others. Another activity mentioned is
data cleaning (data scrubbing), include detecting and correcting data in a database that are
incorrect, incomplete, improperly formatted among other processes. The authors disclosed that
specialized data-cleaning software is available to automatically survey data files, correct errors
in data and integrate the data. The interactive session on organizations, topic “Credit Bureau
Errors – Big People Problems”
The authors’ hands-on MIS projects touched on:
1. Management decision problems
2. Achieving operational excellence: building a relational database for inventory
management
3. Improving decision making: searching online databases for overseas business resources.
The authors closed this chapter with a case study titled Lego: Embracing Change by Combining
BI with a Flexible Information System.
CONCLUSION
The two chapters 4 and 6 of the book both end with case studies. Chapter 4’s case study
touches on Radiation Therapy whiles chapter 6 touches Change by combining BI with
Information System. The chapters seek to equip the reader with information systems and data
management skills which are the bedrock of social, economic and political development.