MGT300, Chapter 1: Business Driven Technology

Information Technology's Role in Business

  • Information technology is everywhere in business
  • Understanding information technology provides greater insight to anyone that learning about business
Information Technology's Impact on Business Operations
  • Organizations typically operate by functional areas or functional silos
  • Functional areas are interdependent
  • Information technology plays a critical role in deploying enterpisewide initiatives to achieve business goals
Information Technology Basics
  • Information Technology (IT) is a field concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information
  • IT is an important enabler of business success and innovation
  • Management Information Systems (MIS) is a general name for the business function(departments) and academic discipline covering the application of people, technologies and procedures to solve business problems
  • MIS is a business function, similar to Accounting, Finance, Operations and Human Resources
Data is a raw facts that describe the characteristics of an event

Information is a data converted into a meaningful and useful context to make decisions

Business Intelligence is an applications and technologies that are used to support decision-making efforts such as Windows

IT Resources
  • The plans and goals of the IT department must align with the plans and goals of the organization
  • People use 
  • Information technology to work with
  • Information
IT Cultures
Organizational information cultures including:
  1. Information-Functional Culture: Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others. For example, a manager is sales refuses to share information with marketing. This causes marketing to need the sales manager's input each time a new sales strategy is developed.
  2. Information-Sharing Culture:  Employees across departments trust each others to use information (especially about problems and failures) to improve performance.
  3. Information-Inquiring Culture: Employees across departments search for information to better understand the future and align themselves with current trends and new directions.
  4. Information-Discovery Culture: Employees across departments are open to new insights about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantages.