Transcript silos, mousetraps, and islands

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
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manage complexity
achieve mastery
reduce switching costs
reduce training costs
increase scalability
specialization & control
and increased need for control
A single, unified task…
…naturally divides into subtasks
resulting in task specialization
coordinating mechanisms
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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 form
strategic
apex
technostructure
middle
line
support
staff
operating core
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 Law
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
Merced
10M
transistors
1M
100K
10K
4004
8080
8086
80286
80486
80386
Pentium
500
mips
25
1.0
0.1
generations
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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
responsiveness / usability
connectivity / responsiveness
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 IS
strategic
apex
executive IS
decision support
technostructure
middle
line
support
staff
operating core
geographic IS
artificial
intelligence
factory
automation
(CIM)
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