The structure (or organizational structure) component of information systems refers to the relationship among the individuals in the people component. Thus, it encompasses hierarchical and reporting structures, and reward systems. The structure component plays a critical role in an information system, simply because systems often fail when they are resisted by their intended users. This can happen because individuals feel threatened by the new work system, or because of inherent human resistance to change. When designing a new information system the organization needs to be cognizant of the current and future reward system in order to create incentives to secure its success.
Relationships between the four components At this point it should be clear how information systems, while enabled by IT, are not synonymous with IT. Each of the four components discussed above can undermine the success of an information system – the best software application will yield little result if users reject it and fail to adopt it. More subtly, the four components of information systems must work together for the systems to perform. Thus, when the organization decides to bring in a new technology to support its operation, the design team must adjust the existing processes or develop new ones. The people involved must be trained to make sure that they can carry out the processes. If the skills of these individuals are such that they can’t perform the required tasks or be trained to do so, a different set of individuals need to be brought in to work with the system. Finally, the design team must evaluate whether the organizational structure needs to be modified as well. New positions may need to be created for additional responsibilities, and old jobs may need to be eliminated. The transition from the old way of doing things to the new system needs to be managed, ensuring that appropriate incentives and a reward structure is put in place. Following is an example that illustrates the interdependence of the four components of information systems.
Mrs. Field’s Cookies (Ostofsky and Cash, 1988), one of the world’s largest snack-food stand franchisors, which currently owns stores in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, the United Kingdom and Australia, was started by a young mother with no business experience. Debbi Fields started baking when she was a teenager. Her cookies were so popular that she decided to open her first store in Palo Alto, California in 1977. When the business started expending, Randy Fields, Debbi’s husband, believed that it was more important to keep the size of the staff small in order to enable the decisions making process to be faster and more accurate. He saw information systems as a way to avoid expanding staff while growing the business.
The system introduce at Ms Field’s that was used by the store manager on a daily basis was the day planner system. Every morning, the store manager entered information, such as day of the week and weather condition, into the system. Then, the system computed the projected sales and recommends when the cookies should be baked. The store sales were then periodically entered into the system during the day to adjust the projections and recommendations. Every day, the sales results were sent to the corporate database for review so the headquarter could respond quickly if any store was not performing well.
The objectives of building information systems Having defining what information systems are, we now look at the reasons why modern organizations introduce them.
- 7622 reads
