Silos, mousetraps, and islands

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Silos, mousetraps, and islands

• a chronicle of information systems in
  organizations

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objectives

• develop sense of context for
• organizations
• information technology
• information systems
• describe some of advances and failures of the old
  context

3
why organize?

• division of labor
• manage complexity
• achieve mastery
• reduce switching costs
• reduce training costs
• increase scalability

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specialization control
A single, unified task
naturally divides into subtasks
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coordinating mechanisms

• mutual adjustment
• direct supervision
• standardization of tasks
• standardization of outputs
• standardization of skills

Mintzberg, 1979
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3 PEOPLE 3 CHANNELS
6 PEOPLE 6 CHANNELS???
6 PEOPLE 15 CHANNELS
12 PEOPLE ???
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functional organization
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divisionalized form
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Mintzbergs form
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the flow of formal authority
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the flow of regulated activity
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the flow of informal communication
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set of work constellations
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an organizational mess
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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

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Moores Law
1995
1975
1985
1980
1990
500
Merced
10M
mips
transistors
1M
25
Pentium
80486
100K
1.0
80386
80286
10K
0.1
8086
8080
4004
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generations

• 1st vacuum tubes
• 2nd transistors
• 3rd integrated circuits
• 4th large-scale integration

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failure to communicate

• connectivity is more than technical issue
• organizational inertia and legacy systems
• standards cut both ways
• responsiveness is remote

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connectivity / responsiveness
responsiveness / usability
mainframe
PC / LAN
Internet
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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
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classification of IS
strategic apex
executive IS
decision support
middle line
geographic IS
techno- structure
support staff
artificial intelligence
factory automation (CIM)
operating core
transaction processing
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failure to allocate

• imbalance in distribution centralize/decentralize
  
• duplication of data in functional IS
• technical divide

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summary

• developed sense of context for
• organizations
• information technology
• information systems
• described some of advances and failures of the
  old context