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 form strategic apex operating core middle line support staff techno- 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 Law K 100K 1M 10M transistors mips Merced Pentium

generations  1 st – vacuum tubes  2 nd – transistors  3 rd – integrated circuits  4 th – 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 / responsiveness responsiveness / usability mainframe PC / LANInternet

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 operating core middle line support staff techno- structure executive IS geographic IS decision support factory automation (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