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FREE online courses on Information Technology - Chapter 1 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - FIVE MAJOR TRENDS

 

In the past few years, five major trends have drastically altered the way organizations use technology. These trends make it imperative that a manager becomes familiar with both the use of technology and how to control it in the organization. These trends are as follows:

 

1.                  The use of technology to transform the organization. The cumulative effect of what all the technology firms are installing is to transform the organization and allow new types or organizational structures. Some times the transformation occurs slowly as one unit in an organization begins to use electronic mail.

2.                  The use of information processing technology as a part of corporate strategy.

3.                  Technology as a pervasive part of the work environment. From the largest corporations to the smallest business, we find technology is used to reduce labor, improve quality, provide better customer service, or change the way the firm operates. Factories use technology to design parts and control production. The small auto-repair shop uses a packaged personal computer system to prepare work orders and bills for its customer.

4.                  The use of personal computers as managerial workstations. The personal computers has tremendous appeal. It is easy to use and has a variety of powerful software programs available that can dramatically increase the user's productivity. When connected to a network within the organization and to external networks like the Internet, it provides a tremendous tool for knowledge workers.

5.                  The evolution of the computer from a computational device to a medium for communications. Computers first replaced punched card equipment and were used for purely computational tasks. From the large, centralized computers, the technology evolved into desktop, personal computers. When users wanted to access to information stored in different locations, companies developed networks to link terminals and computers to other computers. These networks have grown and become a medium for internal communications and external with other organizations. For many workers today, the communications aspects of computers are more important than their computational capabilities.

 

What does all this mean for the management student? Unfortunately, it means that you must become more than just “computer literate”. Reading about technology will not be enough for a manager to compete effectively in the future. It is important to have two kinds of knowledge about information technology. The manager must be a competent user of computers and learn to manage information technology. The personal computer connected to a network is as commonplace in the office as the telephone has been for the past seventy-five years. Managers today are expected to make the computer an integral part of their jobs. It is the manager, not the technical staff member, who must come up with the idea for a system, allocate resources, and see the systems are designed well to provide the firm with a competitive edge. You will have to recognize opportunities to apply technology and then manage the implementation of the new technology. The success of information processing in the firm lies more with top and middle management that with the information services department.

 

 

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