Global Management Information Systems - Essay Example

?Running Head: Global Management Information Systems Global Management Information Systems [Institute’s Global Management Information Systems A number of researchers have advised that global information systems (IS) should be part of the policy of organizations, which take account of executive, functional, and aggressive roles. The extent of IS computerization of accounting as well as management tasks covers the managerial function (Leidner & Kayworth, 2008, p. 282). This function needs the exploitation of a competent IS platform for management as well as control of the strategic management of an organisation. The functional task produces and installs technology inside the organisation, which then facilitates in attaining the potential of computerizing business procedures within managerial activities (Laudon & Laudon, 2009, p. 192). The exploitation of an IT infrastructure is a requisite for this function and supports in choosing a business approach. In the same time, the aggressive function concentrates on competence by rising IS traits’ means of getting new bases of competitive gain within the market by installing new IS functions. This role has a major effect on organisational alteration and sustains an organisation’s aptitude to boost its IS potential (Bharati et al, 2010, p. 213). IS strategic planning aspects can be classified in various methods with respect to IS incorporation within business. The majority of configuration models are consisted of two aspects, “namely ‘fit’, which considers both the external and internal environments of an organisation, and ‘linkage’, which is the business-IS alignment” (Oz, 2008, p. 76). In addition, strategic IS planning (SISP) efficiency have five aspects, together with (1) configuration, (2) testing, (3) collaboration, (4) enhancement of potential, and (5) involvement. Nonetheless, these aspects of SISP efficiency are then controlled by “six process dimensions of SISP” (Hirsschheim et al, 2009, p. 222), - by (1) completeness, (2) formalisation, (3) concentration, (4) flow, (5) contribution, and (6) steadiness. A 3-phase model can be applied to assess these aspects in addition to their efficiency. This model has three phases: (1) introductory, (2) growing, and (3) established (Stair & Reynolds, 2011, p. 199). It has been debated that equilibrium should be present amid consistency and flexibility to authorize the procedure to be successful in controlling the organisation during the interim period while, at the same time, developing upcoming technology as well as markets. Each one of these tasks as well as aspects of IS decision makers in knowing the use of IS in the organisation and in finding out IS advantages. Keeping this in consideration, this effort considers the flexibility of applying strategic gains of global IS during IS strategic planning to create a classification for assessment as well as knowledge of these advantages. This classification may as well be utilized as a device to support the planning group during the IS planning procedure (Tan, 2002, p. 43). As a growing number of organizations increase their functions into global markets, with the intention of accomplish something, they should to be aware of the substantial civilizing, fiscal, as well as political variety that is present within different regions around the globe. For these reasons, despite the fact that IT is a significant facilitator and, on several occasions, a driver of international business growth, it cannot be applied homogeneously all over the world. In the last couple of years, the world has observed an extraordinary growth of commerce within international markets. Initially imagined by McLuhan (1964), the thought of a ‘global village’, has become a reality at last. At the same time, there is awareness that IT has a vital part in the “race towards globalization” (Avgerou, 2003, p. 99). IT has been a decisive facilitator of globalization in the majority of instances and an initiator in a number of cases. Now, transnational companies as well as governments depending increasingly on IT for carrying out business globally. Hence, with the intention of completely utilizing the huge potential of IT, it is very essential for business managers as well as ‘chief information executives’ to recognize the nature of the universal IT situation (Lan, 2005, p. 134). Information on important management information systems and IT management concerns has persistently taken place around the globe. As technology is incorporated by other nations, researchers have started to discover IS concerns within these nations. Quite a lot of studies have appeared in past couple of years: “representative examples include: North American and European issues (CSC Index, 1995), Canada issues (Carey, 1992), Australia issues (Watson, 1989), Hong Kong issues (Burn et al., 1993), India issues (Palvia and Palvia, 1992), and Singapore issues (Rao et al., 1987)” (Yap, 2011, p. 155). These studies are considered to be of significance, as they not just discover concerns important for finding out strategies for businesses, but as well offer direction for potential MIS training, practice, and study. Advanced and industrialized nations include the United States, Western European countries, Japan, and Australia among others. Important IS issues have been analytically and intermittently examined in the United States, Australia, Japan, and Western European nations during the last twenty years (Schniederjans et al, 2006, p. 201). Quite a lot of nations have made quick financial development during a decade. These nations have materialized as the freshly developed nations and are now starting to flourish (Currie, 2000, p. 192). Whereas the exact classification of every nation into any group is rather debatable, and is as well dependent on movement in due course, nations like “Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ireland, South Korea, and Singapore” (Kumar, 1999, p. 45) come into this category. “Singapore issues were reported by Rao et al. (1987), Hong Kong issues by Burn et al. (1993), and Taiwan issues by Wang (1994) and Palvia and Wang (1995)” (Kumar, 1999, p. 46). The strategic IS has quite a lot of universalistic assumptions, which offer a way of carrying out IS management and concentrate on the methods in which it can be enhanced. Universalistic assumptions offer important insights by concentrating on an IS management policy, its roles, and the means in which it can be improved. On the other hand, universalistic assumptions consider the similar policy as practical in every situation, instead of exploring many policies in other situations. As a result, they do not offer an adequately integrative view of a number of features of businesses, and may be more befitting for comparatively “narrow domains” (Belkhamza & Wafa, 2012, p. 182). In contrast, eventuality viewpoint look at the outcomes of situational, organizational, and IS perspectives on IS administration, or the configuration among some specific features of IS administration as well as the consequent phases of organizational management. Such theories show that better configuration between aspects from IS domains creates better performance (More et al, 2012, p. 271). Eventuality models identify the significance of alternative perspectives, and consequently offer an additionally integrative view of global IS management. Nevertheless, they are mostly “static in nature” (Hunter, 2008, p. 76), concentrating on configuration on one occasion, and its interim “performance implications” (Hunter, 2008, p. 77). Key Management Issues linked with MIS 1. Enterprise Model Enterprise model is an advanced plan of the information needs of a business. It is commonly known as the ‘Information architecture’ and it offers the general outline to conduct application expansion as well as database improvement. It takes account of the main groups of information (known as entities), and their links to different tasks as well as procedures within the organization. The stages incorporated within enterprise modelling consist of efficient disintegration, entity-association plans, and scheduling matrices (Hunter & Tan, 2006, p. 77). 2. Source of Data Data must be considered as a fundamental resource for an organization, particularly for the information systems role and application expansion. Statistics as well as information are business assets, and not within the sphere of influence of a person or a subgroup, but for the gain of the whole business (Vaidya & James, 2011, p. 301). Organizations gather huge quantities of not just in-house records but the huge quantities of facts from outer sources as well, for instance, clientele, dealers, government and other businesses. These records must be accurately controlled as well as influenced for optimizing the profit to the business. The creation of big corporate records, in addition to the materialization of organizations focusing on particular forms of records highlights the significance of the source of data (Basden, 2007, p. 312). 3. Strategic MIS Planning Global IS planning provide sustenance to organizational objectives, tasks, and policy. With the function of IS raised to a strategic means for gaining competitive benefit as well as acquiring better performance, the requirement for strategic IS planning is of huge significance (Bharati et al, 2010, p. 242). However, strategic planning continues to be a problematic subject for both senior IS as well as non-IS managers. The pace of technical alteration needs the capacity to create “quick courses of action” (Bharati et al, 2010, p. 330) on reasonably priced overheads, before they turn out to be outdated. Additionally intensifying the circumstances is quick organizational alteration in addition to environmental amendment outside the company. Maybe due to the problems, this concern has stayed among the top concerns within the entire earlier studies (Whitman & Woszczynski, 2003, p. 200). 4. Workforce for IS Workforce for IS consist of technological as well as managerial employees. This aspect incorporates issues such as scheduling for workers, hiring, maintaining the quality human resources, and forming workforce. Although there is not any deficiency of IS expertise, the speedy technical alteration generates deficiency of specific expertise. For instance, “object oriented programmers are in short supply and in great demand at the present time” (Koumpis, 2012, p. 320). An additional event of the previous decade, which has severe allegations for employees, is scaling down of IS in addition to outsourcing. Organizations have to choose which IS roles can be subcontracted to outside service providers and which have to be maintained domestically. These decisions have “strategic implications for the organization” (Koumpis, 2012, p. 322). 5. Learning in Organization This matter requires persistent organizational learning with reference to the usage of IT, as well as dynamic use of IS. Traditionally, IS have been started by IS executives, and they have been the vendors of IT. Nevertheless, the businesses that grow will have to make appropriate utilization of IS and will have to apply it within the entire organization. In accordance with the recent examples, line managers are making plans for the growth of IS applications, and “end user computing” (Jones et al, 2002, p. 101) is turning out be persistent. The inclinations “bode well” (Jones et al, 2002, p. 101) for IT learning in organization, on the other hand, these applications has to develop to a wider array of businesses. 6. Technology Infrastructure It takes account of such constituents like company’s various processors, “telecommunication networks (both LANs and WANs), records, operating systems, system software, and business applications” (Gunasekaran, 2008, p. 112). Another issue refers to the growth of an effective technology infrastructure that will provide sustenance to business policy as well as organizational objectives. The emergence of this issue may have “again been driven by strategic concerns” (Vahidov, 2012, p. 261). Need of a synchronized policy for technology infrastructure may have barred businesses from making appropriate gain from business prospects as they appeared. 7. Configuration of Organization The organizational configuration of the IS department has a direct effect on its usefulness. Few years back, IS was transferred to accounting or human resources departments, and had the representation of a “service/overhead function” (Valverde & Talla, 2012, p. 287). Despite the fact that representation has been mainly removed, there are still concerns lining to its appropriate configuration. For individuals, who think of IS as a strategic task, the IS department has gone up within the organizational ‘chain of command’. Now, big organizations have posts such as “Chief Information Officer (CIO) and vice-president of IT” (Valverde & Talla, 2012, p. 291). An additional concern associated with configuration is the matter of ‘integrated’, ‘decentralized’, or ‘distributed’ IS organization. Technology can successfully sustain any opportunity; the most important concern is that the IS must be steady with the organizational values. 8. Competitive Gain IT as well as IS within an organization can be utilized in a number of ways to get a determined gain on its rivals. Previous examples of organizations applying IS in this way take account of “American Airlines, United Airlines, American Hospital Supply Co., and Merrill Lynch” (Dwivedi et al, 2009, p. 216). The 1980s offered a main driving force for applying IT as a source of competitive gain. This subject still positioned among top issues by senior IS managers. Global information systems are aimed at clientele, dealers, or rivals, and are a fundamental component of an organization’s competitive policy. At the time of aiming at IS, exterior entities are among the important sources of competitive gain, other sources take account of using IT for business remodel, recuperating efficiency of business, reorganization of organizational procedures, and incorporation of organizational activities. 9. Development of Software(s) The development of software signifies a key spending for the IS business, still it stays burdened with issues of bad quality, unfilled requirements, persistent postponements, and exceeded funds. Simultaneously, the organization is in front of additional alternatives: (1) internal growth, (2) ‘software packages’, and (3) subcontracting. Latest enhancements, such as “software engineering methodologies, prototyping and CASE tools” (Smolnik, 2011, p. 177), guarantee to offer a lot of highly required assistance. Nonetheless, businesses are further tested, as they have to persistently assess latest expertise and expansion theories, for instance, “distributed processing, visual languages and object oriented programming (Smolnik, 2011, p. 179). Largely, latest advancement is being done by means of “C++ or alike programming languages” (Smolnik, 2011, p. 179). 10. Telecommunication Arrangements Telecommunication arrangements are the ‘backbone’ for a company to do business at any place, on any time, with no limitation of ‘time or distance’. Whereas the previous concentration within telecommunication arrangements was on linking users to an integrated ‘mainframe processor’, the improved prominence is on offering connectivity amid various “computing centres and users, who are widely dispersed geographically, and many times globally” (Siau, 2011, p. 204). In addition, telecommunication networks have to considerably increase their bandwidth with the intention of carrying every form of signals: “data, graphics, voice, and video” (Tavana, 2011, p. 209). Problems that are in front of the execution of telecommunication systems consist of enormous economic funds and deficiency of general industry principles. Still, for organizations that have executed ‘backbone networks’, the remunerations have been remarkable (Abdul-Qader, 1999, p. 114). References Abdul-Qader, A. H. 1999. Managing Computer-Based Information Systems in Developing Countries: A Cultural Perspective. New York: IGI Global. Avgerou, C. 2003. Information Systems and Global Diversity. Oxford: OUP. Basden, A. 2007. Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems. New York: IGI Global. Bharati, P., Lee, I., and Chaudhry, A. 2010. Global Perspectives on Small and Medium Enterprises and Strategic Information Systems: International Approaches. 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