IS 301 Exam
From a business perspective, an information system provides a solution to a problem or challenge facing a firm and represents a combination of management, organization, and technology elements. The organization's hierarchy, functional specialties, business processes, culture, and political interest groups are components of which element of information systems? - Organization - Processing - Management - Technology
Organization
__________ actually produce the product and deliver the service in an organization.
Production workers
The use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals is called __________.
Profiling
Which of the following information system department specialists are highly trained technical specialists who write the software instructions for computers?
Programmers
The disciplines that contribute to the behavioral approach (focusing on the design, implementation, management, and business impact of systems) are: - Psychology, sociology, and economics - computer science, sociology, and economics
Psychology, sociology, and economics
What are the basic concepts of ethical analysis?
Responsibility, Accountability, Liability, and Due process.
To take the action that produces the least harm or the least potential cost refers to which ethical principle of conduct?
Risk Aversion Principle
What does Senior management, middle management, and operational management do?
Senior management makes long-term decisions. Middle management includes the scientists and knowledge workers and they design the products and service, and carries out senior management plans. Operational management includes the production and service workers & data workers which manages daily activities.
In which of the approaches to information systems is the performance of a system optimized when both the technology and the organization mutually adjust to one another until a satisfactory fit is obtained?
Sociotechnical
What is a possible advantage of new entrants in an industry?
They are more highly motivated than traditional occupants of an industry.
__________ are those assets required to derive value from a primary investment.
complementary assets = A supportive business culture that values efficiency and effectiveness, an appropriate business model, efficient business processes, decentralization of authority, highly distributed decision rights, and a strong information system (IS) development team
The disciplines that contribute to the technical approach (focusing on formal models and capabilities of systems) are:
computer science, management science, and operations research
Judy is a data analyst who spends more than 6 hours a day at her computer. She has been experiencing headaches, blurred vision, and dry and irritated eyes. Which occupational health risk does Judy likely suffer?
computer vision syndrome
A statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the author's death is a __________.
copyright
Information system affect ethical principles b/c they _____.
create opportunities for intense social change
Describe enterprise applications
systems that span functional areas, focus on executing business processes across the business firm, and include all levels of management.
Decision-support system
systems that support management decisions that are unique and rapidly changing using advanced analytical methods.
Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative states __________.
that if the action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone.
Define processing
the function of an information system that converts raw input into a meaningful form.
Describe a social business
the use of social networking platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and internal corporate social tools, to engage employees, customers, and suppliers to enhance collaborative work.
Organizations using information systems to deal with competitive forces __________.
tighten linkages with suppliers and develop intimacy with customers.
What are web beacons?
tiny software programs that keep a record of users' online clickstream.
What are the three principal levels of business organizational hierarchies?
top: senior management middle: middle management - scientists and knowledge workers bottom: operational management - production, service and data workers.
Describe customer relationship management (CRM) systems
track all the ways in which a company interacts with its customers and analyze these interactions to optimize revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, and customer retention.
What is collaboration?
working with others to achieve shared and explicit goals.
The management dimension of information systems involves which set of component?
Leadership, strategy, and management behavior
How does the advent of information technology affect the work-life balance of an employee?
Leisure time has been converted into a time to do work.
__________ is a field that deals with the behavioral issues as well as technical issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of information systems used by managers and employees in a firm.
Management information systems
Describe NORA (non-obvious relationship awareness)
NORA is a new data analysis technology that takes information about people from many disparate sources and correlates relationship to find obscure hidden connections that might help identify criminals or terrorists.
Internet sites like eBay (the giant online auction site) and iVillage (an online community for women) can be used by firms to build communities of users—like-minded customers who want to share their experiences. This builds customer loyalty and enjoyment and develops unique ties to customers. This scenario is an example of how information systems help businesses use __________ to achieve competitive advantage.
Network-based strategies
How does the ability to download a Kindle e-book from Amazon, buy a computer online at Best Buy, and download a song from iTunes illustrate the way information systems affect business processes?
New information technology frequently changes the way a business works and supports entirely new business models.
__________ is one of the four basic competitive strategies, and uses information systems to develop strong ties and loyalty with customers and suppliers.
Customer and supplier intimacy
Substitute products that perform as well as or better than anything currently produced are called __________.
Disruptive technologies
Implementing information systems has economic, organizational, and behavioral effects on firms. Information technology, especially the use of networks, can help firms lower the cost of market participation (transaction costs), making it worthwhile for firms to contract with external suppliers instead of using internal sources. As a result, firms can shrink in size. What kind of impact?
Economic
What directly links consumer behavior to distribution and production and supply chains?
Efficient customer response system.
True or False: The behavioral approach ignores technology.
FALSE
True or false about info sys and globalization: Communication between businesses in different parts of the world is now instant, but expensive.
FALSE
A flexible collection of computers on the Internet begins to perform tasks traditionally performed on corporate computers. Major business applications are delivered online as an Internet service.
Growth in cloud computing
Example: many businesses are able to electronically check a client's credit and generate an invoice. What does this example illustrate about the way information systems affect business processes?
Information systems automate many steps in business processes that were formerly performed manually.
What is a value web?
It is a collection of interdependent firms that use information technology to coordinate their value chains to produce a product or services for a market collectively.
What is an end user?
It is a representative of departments outside of the information systems group for whom applications are developed.
Describe a digital firm?
It is one in which nearly all of the organization's significant business relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees are digitally enabled and mediated.
What is business intelligence and what are the systems?
- Data and software tools for organizing and analyzing data - Used to help managers and users make improved decisions - Management information systems: serves middle management, provides reports on firm's current performance, based on data from TPS, provides answers to routine questions w| predefined procedure for answering them, typically have little analytic capability. - Decision support systems: serves middle management, supports non-routine decision making, may use external info as well as TPS/MIS data, model and data driven. - Executive support systems: supports senior management, address non-routine decisions, incorporates data about external events as well as summarized information from internal MIS and DSS.
What is the European directive on data protection?
- companies must inform people if their information is collected and disclose how it is stored and used. EU members cannot transfer personal data to countries w/o similar privacy protection.
How is information systems transforming business?
- emerging mobile digital platform - growing business use of "big data" - growth in cloud computing
What are cookies?
- identifies browsers and tracks visits to sites - super cookies (flash cookies) - zombie cookies can't be deleted, they come back.
Describe a strategic transition
A movement between levels of sociotechnical systems.
Describe Organizational complementary assets
A supportive business culture that values efficiency and effectiveness, an appropriate business model, efficient business processes, decentralization of authority, highly distributed decision rights, and a strong information system (IS) development team.
What is an information system?
An information system can be defined technically as a set of interrelated components that collect, process, store, and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization.
Describe a telepresence technology
An integrated audio and visual environment which allows a person to give the appearance of being present at a location other than the person's true physical location.
Describe the Information system triangle
Bottom to Top: - Data: raw facts, mumbers - Information: when? who? what? Processed/Aggregated data - Knowledge: application of data and information to answer, How? - Wisdom: Answers, Why?
__________ is a contemporary term for data and software tools for organizing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help managers and other enterprise users make more informed decisions.
Business intelligence
A logically related set of activities that defines how specific business tasks are performed and represents a unique way in which an organization coordinates work, information, and knowledge is called a(n)________________.
Business process
__________ refer to the set of logically related tasks and behaviors that organizations develop over time to produce specific business results and the unique manner in which these activities are organized and coordinated.
Business processes
What occupational health risk consists of pressure on the median nerve through the wrist's bony structure and produces pain?
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Inbound logistics (receiving and storing materials for distribution to production), operations (transforming inputs into finished products), outbound logistics (storing and distributing finished products), sales and marketing, and service are all __________.
Primary activities
Which of the following are examples of key managerial complementary assets? - Strong senior management support for change, incentive systems that monitor and reward individual innovation, an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, training programs, and a management culture that values flexibility and knowledge - Decentralization of authority, highly distributed decision rights, and a strong information system (IS) development team
Strong senior management support for change, incentive systems that monitor and reward individual innovation, an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, training programs, and a management culture that values flexibility and knowledge
__________ consist of organization infrastructure (administration and management), human resources (employee recruiting, hiring, and training), technology (improving products and the production process), and procurement (purchasing input).
Support activities
The __________ to information systems emphasizes mathematically based models to study information systems, as well as physical technology and formal capabilities of these systems. - Technical approach - behavioral approach - sociotechnical - managerial assets
Technical approach
Which of the following is a good example of the relationship between information systems and customer and supplier intimacy? - Verizon Corporation uses a Web-based digital dashboard to provide managers with precise real-time information on customer complaints, network performance for each locality served, and line outages or storm-damaged lines. Using this information, managers can immediately allocate repair resources, inform consumers of repair efforts, and restore service fast. - The Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan keeps track of guest's preferences, such as their preferred room temperature and television programs, in a large data repository. Individual rooms are networked to a central network server computer, so that when a customer arrives, the system automatically changes the room conditions to meet each customer's specifications.
The Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan
With what does the field of management information systems deal?
The behavioral issues as well as technical issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of information systems used by managers and employees in a firm.
Which department consists of specialists such as programmers, systems analysts, and project leaders?
The information systems department
The organizational dimension of information systems involves which set of components?
The organization's hierarchy, functional specialties, business processes, culture, and political interest groups.
What is the ethical "no free lunch" rule?
The principle that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise refers to.
Define value chain model
The value chain model highlights the primary or support activities that add a margin of value to a firm's products or services where information systems can best be applied to achieve a competitive advantage.
Describe a transaction processing system (TPS).
Transaction processing systems are systems serving operational management, such as payroll or order processing, that track the flow of the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business. - Allows managers to monitor status of operations and relations w/ external environment. - Serve predefined, structured goals and decision making.
What are synergies?
Used by information systems to help businesses to achieve competitive advantage; the idea of synergies is that when the output of some units can be used as input to other units, or two organizations pool markets and expertise, these relationships lower costs and generate profits.
Which of the following is a good example of the relationship between information systems and operational excellence? - In 2012, Walmart achieved $460 billion in sales in large part because of its Retail Link system, which digitally links its suppliers to every one of Walmart's stores. As soon as a customer purchases an item, the supplier monitoring the item knows to ship a replacement to the shelf. - Apple, Inc. transformed an old model of music distribution based on vinyl records, tapes, and CDs into an online, legal distribution model based on its own iPod technology platform.
Walmart
What is agency theory?
a firm is viewed as a "nexus of contracts" among self-interest individuals rather than as a unified, profit-maximizing entity.
What is a safe harbor?
a private, self-regulating policy and enforcement mechanism that meets the objectives of government regulation or enforcement (doesn't exist anymore).
Describe an organization
a stable, formal social structure that takes resources from the environment and processes them to produce outputs.
What are core competencies?
activities at which a firm excels as a world-class leader.
What is a cyberlocker?
an online file-sharing service that allows users to upload files to secure online storage sites from which the files can be shared with others.
Define executive support system (ESS)
are information systems at the organization's strategic level designed to address unstructured decision making through advanced graphics and communications; Systems for senior management that provide data in the form of graphs, charts, and dashboards delivered via portals using many sources of internal and external information
What does networking and telecommunications technology consist of?
both physical devices and software, links the various pieces of hardware, and transfers data from one physical location to another.
A __________ is loosely coupled but interdependent networks of suppliers, distributors, outsourcing firms, transportation service firms, and technology manufacturers.
business ecosystem
Privacy is the __________.
claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance.
Describe benchmarking
comparing the efficiency and effectiveness of a business process against strict standards and then measuring the performance against those standards.
Define a business model
describes how company produces, delivers, and sells product/service to create wealth ex/ Apple's iPad, Google's Android OS, and Netflix
Amazon was an e-commerce leader with its rapid distribution of a wide array of products, but the firm now faces competition from eBay, Yahoo, and Google. This example illustrates the_____
difficulty of sustaining competitive advantage
What is a keystone firm?
dominates ecosystems and creates a platform used by other firms.
Describe knowledge management systems
enterprise application supports the creation, capture, storage, and dissemination of firm expertise and knowledge
What is the Descartes's rule of change?
ethical principle of conduct can also be called the slippery-slope rule (an action may bring about a small change now that is acceptable, but if it is repeated, it might bring unacceptable changes in the long run).
Transaction cost theory
firms and individuals seek to spend less on the costs incurred when a firm buys on the marketplace what it cannot make itself.
Patents
grants creator of invention an exclusive monopoly on ideas behind invention for 20 years.
What is computer abuse?
he commission of acts involving a computer that may not be illegal but that are considered unethical.
What are the five moral dimensions of the information age?
information rights and obligations, property rights and obligations, accountability and control, system quality, and quality of life.
Define trade secret
intellectual work or product belonging to business, not in the public domain.
Why do information systems affect ethics?
it raises concerns about the use of intellectual property
Describe an electronic business
it refers to the use of digital technology and the Internet to execute the major business processes in the enterprise.
What are enterprise applications
links enterprise, spans functional areas, executes business processes across firm, includes all levels of management. - enterprise systems - SCM systems - Customer relationship management systems - Knowledge management systems
What is a network?
links two or more computers to share data or resources.
Which of the following types of operational personnel is responsible for monitoring the daily activities of the business?
operational management
Support activities consist of __________
organization infrastructure, human resources, technology, and procurement.
Describe the Utilitarian Principle
prioritize values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action; take the action that achieves the higher/greater value for greater population.
Describe the Golden Rule
putting yourself into the place of others and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision.
Describe ethics
refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors.
What is a niche firm?
relies on a platform developed by a Keystone firm; individual firms can consider how IT will help them become profitable niche players in large ecosystems.
Copyright
statutory grant protecting intellectual property from being copied for the life of the author, plus 70 years.
Which of the four major enterprise applications automate the flow of information between a firm and its suppliers in order to optimize the planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery of products and services?
supply chain management
