ch -5 impact of information technology on organizations and society
TRANSCRIPT
Ch -5
Impact of Information Technology on Organizations
and Society
Impact of MIS
• It creates an impact on the organization functions, performance and productivity.
• With good MIS support ,the management of marketing, finance production and personal becomes more efficient
• Tracking and monitoring of the functional targets becomes easy• Functional managers are informed about the progress achievements and
shortfalls in the activity and the targets.• Manager is kept alert by providing certain information indicating and
trends in the various aspects of business. This helps in forecasting and long term perspective planning.
• Manager gets attention to situation which is exceptional in nature inducing him to take an action or a decision in the matter.
• MIS creates a structured database and a knowledge base for all the people in the organization.
• The information is available that it can be used straight away or by blending and analysis saving the managers valuable time.
Impact of MIS contd…
• Better understanding of the business itself.• MIS begins with the definition of a data entity and its attributes . It uses a
dictionary of data ,entity and attributes designed for information generation in the organization brings clarity in the communication &understanding of an event in the organization.
• MIS calls for a systemization of the business operations for an effective system design.
• Its leads to streamlining of the operations which complicates the system design.
• It improves the admission of the business by bringing disciplines in its operations.
• It brings a high degree of professionalism in the business operations.• Goals and objective of the MIS or the products of business goals and
objectives, it helps indirectly to pull the entire organization in one direction towards the corporate goals &objective by providing relevant information to the people.
Impact of MIS contd…
• It has impact on the managerial efficiency.• The fund of information motivates an enlighten manager to use a variety of
tools of the management.• The use of the computers enables him to use the tools and techniques
which are impossible to use manually.• Improves the managerial ability to perform• It improves the decision making a a ability considerable.• MIS works on the basis systems such as transaction processing and
database, the clerical work is transferred to the computerized system.,releaving the human mind for better work.
• Lot of man power is engaged in this activity. If you see the individual time utilization and its application ,70% of the time is spent in recording, searching, processing and communicating. It is very large overhead in the organization .It creates an information based work culture.
Impact of Information Technology on Organizations and Society
• Internet has a powerful impact on the way business organizations operate.
• There are “virtual teams “ that operate successfully where team members in virtual contact- “mouse to mouse” and face to face as is the case of conventional work teams.
• In these virtual teams, it is possible team members have not met each other in a conventional manner-across the table but have been communicating electronically.
• The technical progress has helped in paradigm shift manifested in form of
ERP, SCM, CRM and so on.
Impact of Information Technology on Society
Positive Impact
• IT and internet together affected individuals adversely.
• All these revolutions created new opportunities, reduced costs, saved time enabled fast processing of information and decision making.
• It affects favorably ,the cost of job and time taken to complete.
• Individual became a highly productive resource.
• IT application affect individuals , their family ,work groups ,organization and business at large.
Impact of Information Technology on Society contd…
Negative impact• These technologies have reduced number of jobs and job opportunities.
Many individuals became redundant in the organization due to their inability to accept the new challenges of technology. Put pressure on job holder to learn continuously, raises stress level due to continuous impending job insecurity.
• Increased stress and stress related health problems• It reduces social interaction in the job as most of the business processes are
dehumanized. It has reduced direct human interaction due to working in virtual mode affecting the relationships between the individuals
• It threatens the violation of privacy of individual or work group or organization.
• The question therefore arises whether it is ethical to use IT aggressively and accept its impact?
Impact of Information Technology on Privacy
• Privacy is the right of individual to hold back certain information about self without disclosure and allow it to be collected with the consent with the assurance that it would remain protected from unauthorized access.
• Individual is a member of the family, a social group and organization. During the course of the working he provides lot of personal data, and information about credit/ debit card, e-mail address, telephone no., qualification/ skills/ experience, bank acc. no. and so on…
• IT is capable of finding access to this data, download and process it in some manner and create an information set about an individual without the knowledge of that individual. It is called privacy violation.
• Eg: e-buying, e-ticketing, e-business, • Information is passed through information download, form fill ups, location tracking S/W like use
of RFID, Microchips, email records, passwords misused.• The laws of protecting individual privacy are different in different countries. Most business
organizations are gone across the glob in different areas. In this case an individual is subject to a risk of exposing the personal record for undeclared use.
• Actions are to be taken by an individual are:• Check why personal data is required?• Get commitment on what use it would be put to.• Declare your choice where data should not be used without your permission.• Don’t give credit card no. PAN no. that identifies you uniquely.• Sign a Privacy Agreement/ Contract with the organization or obtain a standard privacy agreement signed
by the party.
• IT Industry advocates certain standard ethical practices to safeguard the privacy of information.– No secret record should be maintained about individuals after its use.
– No use can be made other than that of specified original purpose.
– If other use is required, consent of the individual is to be obtained.
– Allow individual a right of inspection and correction.
– Organization, and processing system is responsible for the integrity of the secret data.
• Ethics: is a study of the principles and practices, which guides to decide whether the action taken is morally right or wrong.
• Ethics is about values and human behaviour.
• Privacy is best achieved by Association of Computing Manufacturers (ACM)- code of ethics and providing adequate technical security measures and controls that limit the access to databases and other information.
• ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct – Genera moral imperatives:
– More specific personal responsibilities:
– Organizational leadership imperatives.
Impact of Information Technology on Privacy
Intellectual Property, Copyright and Patents
Intellectual Property • Information or information product such as business rule, business model,
pattern, layout, diagram or specific compilation in certain format used for business advantage can be classified as intellectual property.
• They can be viewed, copied and distributed on network.• In distribution it can change in structure, content, and matter with loss of
its original identity.• Therefore, Intellectual property requires protection provisions from trade
secrets, copyright and patent acts. Trade secrets• Software, if it is unique in design, architecture, process and it is a
creation from within the organization then software is a trade secret.• In the trade secret act ‘Idea’ behind uniqueness is a trade secret and
prevents its copying by law –includes its presentation, implementation and storage.
Intellectual Property, Copyright and Patents contd…
Protection mechanism • Those who are likely to use such product be bound by signing non-disclosure agreement. • to bring the product under license arrangement restricting the use and
knowledge to known license users.Copyright• Copyright act protects intellectual property for pretty long from copying by
others. The protection is applicable against copying part or full in any manner.
• This act is penal and attracts heavy penalty.• Weakness - It does not protect the idea behind product and its use.• If somebody uses the idea and develops a product with difference then it is
not copying.• Illegal copying of computer software is known as software piracy, and is
consider as theft attracting all provisions of the act.
Intellectual Property, Copyright and Patents contd…
• The professionals in IT industry and experts from Law firms are questioning the basic premise whether Information/information Product/Software is a “property” at all.
• There are many aspects of intellectual property which are legal issues, and do not have foolproof legal protection, and also technical solution protecting the violation.
• The only recourse to contain this malice is to depend on ethics and moral commitment on the part of users of the products.
Patents• A ‘patent’ grants the owner of the product exclusive monopoly on the
ideas behind the product for number of years, sufficiently protecting the interest of the owner/inventor of the product.
• They are granted after formal application by the inventor to patent certification body of the country and after an elaborate scrutiny of the invention ,the patents are granted by patent office.
Intellectual Property, Copyright and Patents contd…
Challenges to Intellectual Property Rights Information stored in electronic media can be easily replicated and
reorganized in a new format making it difficult to prove that it is a theft. Internet is used to transmit information in any form freely around the
world. It does not distinguish copying information and other information. With web technology, copying, altering and configuring different
information objects and creation of altogether new information object is easily possible.
Web pages can be constructed with different information objects whose owners are different. A typical web page may show a logo, Text content, Article Extract, links to related contents of the subject photograph or drawing, Ad display and so on.
The author, owner of each object is different buy they are pulled and presented in a web page as one object entity for the viewer.
A powerful copyright patent law suitably modified for internet and web world is necessary to protect the ownership and management of compensation payment to various object owners.
Impact of Information Technology on the work place
Information and information products have raised number of ethical, moral and legal issues, and they are being resolved with acts and laws.
Improving financial performance of the business, it has affected human resource in some aspects in negative manner.
Negative impact Negative impact has brought down personal interaction between human
beings as most of the process dealing with transaction, conversion, communication are automated using, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and knowledge based systems.
Individuals analytical and decision making skills are getting rusted, and work and work place is boring.
With no interaction, individuals are isolated affecting human behavior. It has also created health hazards due continuous working on systems and
applications under stressful conditions.
Impact of Information Technology on the work place contd…
Information and information technology is used to monitor the work, workplace and the worker.
It is used to measure worker’s performance, behavior, and personal characteristics.
There is no resentment if technology is used in following mannerI. Monitor, watch and measure only those personal factors which
contribute for the achievement of business objectives.II. Before implanting such program involve concerned persons, seek their
acceptance through training and explaining the purpose behind such monitoring programme.
III. Allow persons to access the record built and the programs used to built to win their confidence.
IV. Use recorded data to improve the efficiency of the person, and do not use it to punish or to find fault or to discriminate.
Current information technology and the one emerging has potential to harm the worker thought the economic benefits are vary positive.
Impact of Information Technology on the work place contd…
Technology Impact Solution
1. Use of smart ID badge. You can be traced any where. The result is loss of your privacy.
Technology does not offer any meaningful tangible solution to all these problems.
2. Access anywhere through Network Management programmes.
Loss of personal information, Loss of
privacy. 3.Uninterrupted use of PC/Work station
Eye strain, backache, numbness in fingers, wrist pain, repetitive stress injury, techno stress causing
objectionable behavior impatience.
Some of the confirmed observations about technology affecting the worker and work place.
Impact of Information Technology on the work place contd…
Accountability And Liability Efforts are being made to solve the issues and challenges in the area of
privacy protection ,intellectual rights protection relying on laws and acts, and code of ethics.
But one area which still remains nebulas is ‘Accountability’ and who owns the liability if an impact is harmful.
IT and its applications involve number of people and organizations working together at different locations contributing to design ,development, and use of products application.
The entire process is operated by user, internet services provider, certification agencies, software solution provider and many others.
In the event of damage or injury who should be held accountability, and who is liable to pay compensation.
Impact of information technology on the work place contd..
• In the event of incidence of breach, following problems arise:
A. Pinpointing the location and users.
B. Isolating cause, affect and damage and pinning it on one agency.
C. Assigning clearly the cause of damage to hardware, system software, application software, user, owner of the information and so on.
D. Difficulties in envisioning the problem causes and creating contingent protective mechanisms.
In determining accountability, Information Society has to depend on
professional ethics of the participants in the whole process of
information use.
Information Systems Quality and Impacts
Users of information and information products have a capability and understanding to use it with limited knowledge obtained through training, online help, system documentation and so on.
The design and architecture of the information system is based on certain assumptions of data quality, process discipline, pre and post conditions of the process, and constraints.
Information systems are designed to work on certain technology platforms whose inherent technical strengths and limitations are considered as known to the users.
It is difficult to define ‘Information Systems Quality’ as a bench mark or control to pinpoint the responsibility and accountability in the event of damaging impact.
Information Systems Quality and Impacts contd…
Three main sources of poor information systems quality and performance producing damaging impact are the following.
Poor Input data quality
• Invalid source
• Incomplete verification and validation.
• Independent data entry-level controls
• Incorrect application. Software Bugs and errors
• Poor testing and test case designs.
• Heavy reliance on automated testing tools.
• Non-use of walk through, reviews and mapping of RDD (Requirement, Definition, and Description ) Vs SRS (Software Requirement Specifications) Vs design and architecture.
Information Systems Quality and Impacts contd…
Hardware and Software failures• Poor maintenance of hardware and software.• Power failure, and associated system stoppage problems.• Faulty software not able to support promised capabilities and features.• Hardware and software failure caused due to natural or other causes and not supported by
sufficient back-up provisions.
It is believed that no software can be declared as complete and correct before it is released for use to the customer.
So, at what stage a developer should deliver the software confidentially to the customer which is economically, technically and operationally feasible, which very low risk in its usage?
In this regard a developer is ethically bound, and professionally responsible and accountable for meticulously following and adhering industry standards, principles, processes, and practice to control the damaging impact.
Information Systems Quality and Impacts contd…
The developer has professional and social obligation to create awareness and appreciation in the minds of users and customers that:
• A system with zero error and no bugs is a myth.• Data errors by and large are human errors.• Systems are designed on the basis of Requirement, Definition, and
Description (RDD) and Software Requirement Specifications (SRS) finalized at a point of time and in the event of change, the system results would be at variance with the expectation stated in RDD.
‘Zero defect software’ is a myth due to complexity and technology limitation.
Detection and removal of software bugs is continuous process. It is kept under control by implementing the system in a phased manner,
first Alpha testing, then Beta testing ,next user training and hand holding . It is supported by change management system and by a planned
programme of switching to new stable system.
Information Systems Quality and Impacts contd…
In the case of hardware failure caused by fire, earthquakes, accidents of unknown proportion, fixing accountability is the only safeguard for compensation.
Ensuring the input data a specified quality as stipulated in data input design is difficult, and systems of ensuring quality of data are not cent percent assuring.
Testing tools, Technology, processes are available which aid in building quality in the system.
Since the whole process of development from “concept to delivery” is not assuring a quality beyond a limit; one has to rely on professional ethics of the people involved in the exercise of software development.
Impact on Quality of Life
Use of information technology is now being experienced at home, in public institutions, business organizations, education, health care, transportation, manufacturing and services.
It has not only touched our personal life but also affected social life . Following four main areas are seen as affected by impact of information
technology:1. People are empowered with information and knowledge. It has changed
the decision-making hierarchy structure in the organization.2. IT has capable of giving strength to respond quickly, smartly and on
time. In such scenario people affected by such impacts have to adjust very fast to faster pace of working.
3. Technology exposes you to work any time anywhere in single mode or in virtual mode. This means your home could be your office.
Impact on Quality of Life contd…
4. Information technology has given birth to new crime, called as internet
crime or cyber crime, a result of widespread abuse of information
technology. The list of abuse is as given below. Spamming: Sending unsolicited mail. Hacking: Obtain illegal access to personal, commercial data. Jamming: Disabling the site so that authorized viewers can not use
websites. Sending viruses: Insert and send viruses through internet to disable the
computers and net works. Sniffing: Intercepting and collecting personal or key-information using
software in communication network.
Impact on Quality of Life contd…
Impact on social structure or on society is large due to ease of access to information technology. The society is divided broadly in two parts: One having access to technology and other with no access. The division is called ‘Digital Divide’
To protect individuals, groups and organizations from negative impact some technical solutions are available with limited effectiveness. Large areas of problems, issues and disputes are still left to management to rely on ethical practices and moral values.