Silos, mousetraps, and islands

a chronicle of information systems in organizations

objectives develop sense of context for:

organizations information technology information systems

describe some of advances and failures of the old context

why organize? division of labor

manage complexity achieve mastery reduce switching costs reduce training costs increase scalability

A single, unified task…

…naturally divides into subtasks

specialization & control

resulting in task specialization

and increased need for control

coordinating mechanisms mutual adjustment direct supervision standardization of tasks standardization of outputs standardization of skills

Mintzberg, 1979

3 PEOPLE = 3 CHANNELS

6 PEOPLE = 6 CHANNELS???

6 PEOPLE = 15 CHANNELS

12 PEOPLE = ???

functional organization

divisionalized form

Mintzberg’s form

strategicapex

operating core

middleline support

stafftechno-

structure

the flow of formal authority

the flow of regulated activity

the flow of informal communication

set of work constellations

an organizational mess

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

Moore’s Law

1995

10K

100K

1M

10Mtransistors

500

25

1.0

0.1

mips

1975 19851980 1990

40048080

808680286

8038680486

Merced

Pentium

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

failure to communicate connectivity is more than technical

issue organizational inertia and legacy

systems standards cut both ways responsiveness is remote

connectivity / responsivenessre

spon

sive

ness

/ u

sabi

lity

mainframe PC / LAN Internet

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

classification of ISstrategic

apex

operating core

middleline support

stafftechno-

structure

executive IS

geographic IS

decision support

factoryautomation

(CIM)

artificial intelligence

transaction processing

failure to allocate imbalance in distribution:

centralize/decentralize duplication of data in functional IS technical divide

summary developed sense of context for:

organizations information technology information systems

described some of advances and failures of the old context