[Solved] ITC 5301 Unit IIDB

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– ## ManagementInformationSystemsITC5301UnitIIDB.docx

– ## UnitIIStudyGuide.pdf

**## ManagementInformationSystemsITC5301UnitIIDB.docx**

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Management Information Systems ITC 5301 Unit II Discussion Board

Your initial post should be at least 300 words in length.

Your initial post should include at least one APA-formatted scholarly, professional, or textbook reference with accompanying in-text citation to support any paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material.

There has been much legal activity regarding web postings and social media sites like Twitter. Celebrities, elected officials, and many others have taken a stand to complain about being bullied and mocked on social media. These lawsuits are alleging slander and libel against people who posted comments that targeted individuals and businesses. Discuss whether you think these lawsuits have merit and why. Do you think there should be business accountability measures or consequences associated with the things you might say and do on the internet if you use a business network or are on company time? Explain your rationale.

**## UnitIIStudyGuide.pdf**

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Explain how information technology systems influence organizational strategies.
3.1 Explain an organization’s ability to use information technology to achieve strategic goals.

4. Evaluate the prevailing ethical issues of information systems.

4.1 Describe how new technology trends may cause ethical dilemmas.

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 3: Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Unit Lesson

Information Systems: What This Means to Your Organization

For most of us, it is not that difficult to understand certain information technology (IT) concepts. Most of us
use our hardware and equipment fairly well. We know how to download apps on our smartphones. We know
about the systems and applications that we use at work. We may not know all of the details or inner workings
of what information flows where, but we have a good idea of how things work. If we were clueless, we would
not be of much value to our organizations, would we?

Organizations and Strategy

Let’s take this to a more abstract level. How would you answer this question: How is IT used toward the
success of your organization? You might rattle off some reasons relating to the availability of the Internet,
which allows e-mails to flow so that there is connectivity between customers and service representatives. You
might say that your organization has several servers and databases that house data and a security team with
security tools that ensure the safety of the data. You might mention that all the applications allow you to
service your customers in faster, more efficient ways. If you are a little more tech savvy at your organization,
you might even bring up more advanced topics or newer innovations, such as the ones listed below.

• e-commerce
• supply chain management systems (SCM)
• customer relation management systems (CRM)
• SharePoint
• cloud collaboration
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP)
• big data
• data mining
• expert systems

Are the items described here IT tools? Yes, they are used to help make everyone’s lives and jobs easier,
faster, more efficient, and more effective, but let’s ask the question again: How is IT used toward the success
of your organization?

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE
Organizations, Strategy, Ethics, and
Social Issues in Information Systems

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Organizations must deal with a lot of information about every aspect of the business—from customers to
vendors, employees, invoices, payments, inventory, and services. Our information systems make it possible
to organize this information and keep up with it all. Business processes deal with the work that is performed in
our organizations so that we can produce something of value. The performance of our business depends on
how well our business processes work. Our business processes can add extreme value to our organization
because they can be a competitive strength. They can also drag our value down if they are not working well
for the organization. Thus, IT can work in many ways to improve our business processes by introducing
better, faster, and more efficient methods of performing tasks in our business processes.

Imagine how much time and money is saved if a thousand invoices are e-mailed to customers rather than
being mailed via the postal mail. How much time does it take a person to stuff and stamp 1,000 envelopes?

Now, if you look at how technology supports not only business processes but also management groups and
functional groups, you can start to see that they link together in a way that serves to improve organizational
performance.

Value in improved performance. Organizations search every day for ways to improve their performance,
production output, and transaction processing. In recent years, technology has advanced to the point that it
supports enterprise-level systems, applications, networks, collaboration, and so on. There are even enterprise
social networking tools now.

Influence of IT on business-level strategy. Basically, a strategy addresses what needs to be accomplished.
With any organization, the strategic objectives will be similar. The organizational leaders will want to be
number one in their market, increase sales revenue, decrease costs, or strengthen their customer base. It is
certainly not a stretch to understand that a business wants to be the best, the fastest, the most profitable, the
most efficient, the most customer-friendly, and so on.

You must also have a good understanding of what influences organizations. Organizations have a culture.
They have politics, social structure, rules, values, norms, and people. The reality is that technology affects all
aspects of organizations. For example, information systems can have a huge economic impact on an
organization. IT is very costly, but the benefits can influence big increases in revenue or substantial
decreases in costs.

IT can have cultural and social impacts on organizations as well. A large technology implementation can
mean a change in the mindset for many employees who are resistant to change. Imagine that you know
technology implementation will increase the efficiency of operations by 50%, but this may also mean that
fewer employees will be needed. Imagine that you are one of the employees whose job is at risk due to a new
automation. This realization may cause a lot of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety for employees. All of these
factors play an important part in understanding the role that IT plays in organizations. For IT to be beneficial
and for organizations to be successful, organizations have to have clear strategies. Organizations have to
take full advantage of any competitive advantages and understand models such as Porter’s competitive
forces model. Once organizational leaders understand where the business needs to be, they can set clear,
actionable steps to get there. Those steps will involve technology because organizations need to have IT
resources and IT capabilities. It will also involve an organization’s ability to utilize its IT resources and create
value in conjunction with its other assets and resources.

Finally, it is important to note that organizations have to be able to align their technologies with their business
strategies and goals. It does the organization no good to have a well-defined strategy if it does not have the IT
resources and capabilities to meet its goals. On the other hand, if the organization does not have a well-
defined strategy that is appropriate for the business, IT tools will be of little help to reach meaningless goals.

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

As Laudon and Laudon (2022) note, “ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting
as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behavior” (p. 122). The fact is that information
systems open the door for many opportunities to make ethical choices—probably as many, if not more, than
any other area in business.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Why is this statement true? Think about it. IT professionals will likely have access to information more than
anyone else in the organization. Information such as employee information, customer information, and sales
transactions are stored in database tables. A human resources (HR) representative will have access to
employee information. A salesperson or customer service representative will have access to sales information
or basic customer information. An accounts receivable person will have access to customers’ financial
information.

Some IT professionals will have access to all information. Additionally, many organizations have personal
usage rules regarding the personal use of company website, Internet, and e-mail assets. This usually means
that organizations will have applications that log usage into databases. Most of the time, employees’ actual e-
mail text is stored as well. Managers can request reports if they feel an employee is abusing the usage rules,
but who has access to the data at any given time? Some IT professionals will.

Who should have access to this information? Can you imagine what would happen if anyone could access all
of this information? Imagine the unethical, disgruntled employee who was passed over for a promotion
accessing the web logs and seeing that the newly promoted coworker who is married has been researching
dating websites.

There is a lot of trust placed in IT professionals to house and manage all kinds of sensitive information and
not abuse it themselves. This is where the basics of ethics for IT professionals starts. Even within IT, there
are access controls that limit what can be done to the data. In other words, most IT professionals could not
delete their web logs. This is all a part of having good security policies, which we will discuss later.

Even if you, as an IT professional, accidentally view confidential or sensitive information, you have to know
what your ethical responsibility is with regard to that information. Should you inform management that you
saw that information? Another example might be knowing the company’s financial information. It is unethical
and potentially illegal to use that information for your own financial gain.

Ethical Challenges

Let’s examine how technology has advantages and disadvantages by examining the table below from
Chapter 4 in your eTextbook. Technology can create new opportunities to enhance people’s lives, but it can
also be a detriment to improving lives. Technology, such as the Internet, has challenged our understanding of
ethical and privacy issues. Improvements in communications technology, such as high-speed broadband and
globalization, have brought the topic of ethics and privacy to the forefront.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

(Laudon & Laudon, 2022)

Data collected by smart cars and smart device tracking features can be used by auto insurance companies to
monitor the insured’s driving habits and use the data to justify increasing insurance rates. This software can
monitor driver activities such as texting while driving, traveling speeds, alertness, and other driving patterns.
This information can then be used by law enforcement against offenders to support traffic violation charges,
especially if the driver was involved in an accident.

Your individual shopping profile on your favorite online shopping website can be analyzed using advanced
data analytics to reveal your shopping habits and associations that are valuable to corporations, government
agencies, or other entities that use the data to advertise. Frequent visits to a movie theater could reveal
information about your entertainment habits. However, frequent visits to a hospital or care facility would also
reveal far more sensitive information about private medical data that you would not want to share with the rest
of the world.

Summary

This unit covered many of the ethical considerations that you may face at home and in the workplace. In the
workplace, there is always more to consider, so most organizations have ethics training for this purpose. At
home, individuals will need to be knowledgeable about how information is gathered and to whom that
information is given.

Reference

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. L. (2022). Management information systems: Managing the digital firm (17th ed.).

Pearson.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Suggested Unit Resources

In order to access the following resources, click the links below.

To reinforce the concepts from this unit, you are encouraged to review the following:

• Chapter 3 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 3 PowerPoint presentation)

• Chapter 4 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 4 PowerPoint presentation)

The following article discusses ethical issues in information systems.

Mason, R. O. (1986). Four ethical issues of the information age. MIS Quarterly, 10(1), 5–12.

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bsu&AN=4679471&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following article examines how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms.

Wu, S. P.-J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T.-P. (2015). How information technology governance mechanisms and

strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business
and IT managers. MIS Quarterly, 39(2), 497–519.
https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bth&AN=102375761&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following video cases mentioned in your eTextbook augment the information presented in the assigned
chapter readings. You are encouraged to review the Chapter 3 and 4 video cases linked below.

A transcript can be accessed for each video within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the
video title on the right. Closed-captioning can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of each
video.

Akamai Technologies. (2019, October 1). Customer story: Riot games [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqkqjAc5aA

Akamai Technologies. (2019, July 2). Customer story: Roblox [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XU_5XdYPo

CNET. (2015, February 25). CNET News – What the FCC net neutrality rules will mean for Internet users

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84r3qd19tZU

Vox. (2015, February 26). The FCC’s new net neutrality rules, explained in 172 seconds [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKPacCuXsw

Consumer Reports. (2013, June 6). Setting Facebook privacy controls [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWlyut4zsko

Wall Street Journal. (2012, January 25). Google, privacy and what it means for you [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7M_FOhXXKM

Learning Activities (Nongraded)

Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit
them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.

Review the following case study, GE Becomes a Digital Firm: The Emerging Industrial Internet, which
discusses the difficulties faced by large, capital-intensive firms in traditional industries becoming digital firms.
There is a link within the case study to an accompanying video. (A transcript can be accessed for the video

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 6

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the video title on the right. Closed-captioning
can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of the video.)

After watching the video and reviewing the case study, answer the video case questions at the end.

**## UnitIIStudyGuide.pdf**

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Explain how information technology systems influence organizational strategies.
3.1 Explain an organization’s ability to use information technology to achieve strategic goals.

4. Evaluate the prevailing ethical issues of information systems.

4.1 Describe how new technology trends may cause ethical dilemmas.

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 3: Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Unit Lesson

Information Systems: What This Means to Your Organization

For most of us, it is not that difficult to understand certain information technology (IT) concepts. Most of us
use our hardware and equipment fairly well. We know how to download apps on our smartphones. We know
about the systems and applications that we use at work. We may not know all of the details or inner workings
of what information flows where, but we have a good idea of how things work. If we were clueless, we would
not be of much value to our organizations, would we?

Organizations and Strategy

Let’s take this to a more abstract level. How would you answer this question: How is IT used toward the
success of your organization? You might rattle off some reasons relating to the availability of the Internet,
which allows e-mails to flow so that there is connectivity between customers and service representatives. You
might say that your organization has several servers and databases that house data and a security team with
security tools that ensure the safety of the data. You might mention that all the applications allow you to
service your customers in faster, more efficient ways. If you are a little more tech savvy at your organization,
you might even bring up more advanced topics or newer innovations, such as the ones listed below.

• e-commerce
• supply chain management systems (SCM)
• customer relation management systems (CRM)
• SharePoint
• cloud collaboration
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP)
• big data
• data mining
• expert systems

Are the items described here IT tools? Yes, they are used to help make everyone’s lives and jobs easier,
faster, more efficient, and more effective, but let’s ask the question again: How is IT used toward the success
of your organization?

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE
Organizations, Strategy, Ethics, and
Social Issues in Information Systems

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Organizations must deal with a lot of information about every aspect of the business—from customers to
vendors, employees, invoices, payments, inventory, and services. Our information systems make it possible
to organize this information and keep up with it all. Business processes deal with the work that is performed in
our organizations so that we can produce something of value. The performance of our business depends on
how well our business processes work. Our business processes can add extreme value to our organization
because they can be a competitive strength. They can also drag our value down if they are not working well
for the organization. Thus, IT can work in many ways to improve our business processes by introducing
better, faster, and more efficient methods of performing tasks in our business processes.

Imagine how much time and money is saved if a thousand invoices are e-mailed to customers rather than
being mailed via the postal mail. How much time does it take a person to stuff and stamp 1,000 envelopes?

Now, if you look at how technology supports not only business processes but also management groups and
functional groups, you can start to see that they link together in a way that serves to improve organizational
performance.

Value in improved performance. Organizations search every day for ways to improve their performance,
production output, and transaction processing. In recent years, technology has advanced to the point that it
supports enterprise-level systems, applications, networks, collaboration, and so on. There are even enterprise
social networking tools now.

Influence of IT on business-level strategy. Basically, a strategy addresses what needs to be accomplished.
With any organization, the strategic objectives will be similar. The organizational leaders will want to be
number one in their market, increase sales revenue, decrease costs, or strengthen their customer base. It is
certainly not a stretch to understand that a business wants to be the best, the fastest, the most profitable, the
most efficient, the most customer-friendly, and so on.

You must also have a good understanding of what influences organizations. Organizations have a culture.
They have politics, social structure, rules, values, norms, and people. The reality is that technology affects all
aspects of organizations. For example, information systems can have a huge economic impact on an
organization. IT is very costly, but the benefits can influence big increases in revenue or substantial
decreases in costs.

IT can have cultural and social impacts on organizations as well. A large technology implementation can
mean a change in the mindset for many employees who are resistant to change. Imagine that you know
technology implementation will increase the efficiency of operations by 50%, but this may also mean that
fewer employees will be needed. Imagine that you are one of the employees whose job is at risk due to a new
automation. This realization may cause a lot of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety for employees. All of these
factors play an important part in understanding the role that IT plays in organizations. For IT to be beneficial
and for organizations to be successful, organizations have to have clear strategies. Organizations have to
take full advantage of any competitive advantages and understand models such as Porter’s competitive
forces model. Once organizational leaders understand where the business needs to be, they can set clear,
actionable steps to get there. Those steps will involve technology because organizations need to have IT
resources and IT capabilities. It will also involve an organization’s ability to utilize its IT resources and create
value in conjunction with its other assets and resources.

Finally, it is important to note that organizations have to be able to align their technologies with their business
strategies and goals. It does the organization no good to have a well-defined strategy if it does not have the IT
resources and capabilities to meet its goals. On the other hand, if the organization does not have a well-
defined strategy that is appropriate for the business, IT tools will be of little help to reach meaningless goals.

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

As Laudon and Laudon (2022) note, “ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting
as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behavior” (p. 122). The fact is that information
systems open the door for many opportunities to make ethical choices—probably as many, if not more, than
any other area in business.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Why is this statement true? Think about it. IT professionals will likely have access to information more than
anyone else in the organization. Information such as employee information, customer information, and sales
transactions are stored in database tables. A human resources (HR) representative will have access to
employee information. A salesperson or customer service representative will have access to sales information
or basic customer information. An accounts receivable person will have access to customers’ financial
information.

Some IT professionals will have access to all information. Additionally, many organizations have personal
usage rules regarding the personal use of company website, Internet, and e-mail assets. This usually means
that organizations will have applications that log usage into databases. Most of the time, employees’ actual e-
mail text is stored as well. Managers can request reports if they feel an employee is abusing the usage rules,
but who has access to the data at any given time? Some IT professionals will.

Who should have access to this information? Can you imagine what would happen if anyone could access all
of this information? Imagine the unethical, disgruntled employee who was passed over for a promotion
accessing the web logs and seeing that the newly promoted coworker who is married has been researching
dating websites.

There is a lot of trust placed in IT professionals to house and manage all kinds of sensitive information and
not abuse it themselves. This is where the basics of ethics for IT professionals starts. Even within IT, there
are access controls that limit what can be done to the data. In other words, most IT professionals could not
delete their web logs. This is all a part of having good security policies, which we will discuss later.

Even if you, as an IT professional, accidentally view confidential or sensitive information, you have to know
what your ethical responsibility is with regard to that information. Should you inform management that you
saw that information? Another example might be knowing the company’s financial information. It is unethical
and potentially illegal to use that information for your own financial gain.

Ethical Challenges

Let’s examine how technology has advantages and disadvantages by examining the table below from
Chapter 4 in your eTextbook. Technology can create new opportunities to enhance people’s lives, but it can
also be a detriment to improving lives. Technology, such as the Internet, has challenged our understanding of
ethical and privacy issues. Improvements in communications technology, such as high-speed broadband and
globalization, have brought the topic of ethics and privacy to the forefront.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

(Laudon & Laudon, 2022)

Data collected by smart cars and smart device tracking features can be used by auto insurance companies to
monitor the insured’s driving habits and use the data to justify increasing insurance rates. This software can
monitor driver activities such as texting while driving, traveling speeds, alertness, and other driving patterns.
This information can then be used by law enforcement against offenders to support traffic violation charges,
especially if the driver was involved in an accident.

Your individual shopping profile on your favorite online shopping website can be analyzed using advanced
data analytics to reveal your shopping habits and associations that are valuable to corporations, government
agencies, or other entities that use the data to advertise. Frequent visits to a movie theater could reveal
information about your entertainment habits. However, frequent visits to a hospital or care facility would also
reveal far more sensitive information about private medical data that you would not want to share with the rest
of the world.

Summary

This unit covered many of the ethical considerations that you may face at home and in the workplace. In the
workplace, there is always more to consider, so most organizations have ethics training for this purpose. At
home, individuals will need to be knowledgeable about how information is gathered and to whom that
information is given.

Reference

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. L. (2022). Management information systems: Managing the digital firm (17th ed.).

Pearson.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Suggested Unit Resources

In order to access the following resources, click the links below.

To reinforce the concepts from this unit, you are encouraged to review the following:

• Chapter 3 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 3 PowerPoint presentation)

• Chapter 4 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 4 PowerPoint presentation)

The following article discusses ethical issues in information systems.

Mason, R. O. (1986). Four ethical issues of the information age. MIS Quarterly, 10(1), 5–12.

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bsu&AN=4679471&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following article examines how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms.

Wu, S. P.-J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T.-P. (2015). How information technology governance mechanisms and

strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business
and IT managers. MIS Quarterly, 39(2), 497–519.
https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bth&AN=102375761&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following video cases mentioned in your eTextbook augment the information presented in the assigned
chapter readings. You are encouraged to review the Chapter 3 and 4 video cases linked below.

A transcript can be accessed for each video within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the
video title on the right. Closed-captioning can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of each
video.

Akamai Technologies. (2019, October 1). Customer story: Riot games [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqkqjAc5aA

Akamai Technologies. (2019, July 2). Customer story: Roblox [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XU_5XdYPo

CNET. (2015, February 25). CNET News – What the FCC net neutrality rules will mean for Internet users

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84r3qd19tZU

Vox. (2015, February 26). The FCC’s new net neutrality rules, explained in 172 seconds [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKPacCuXsw

Consumer Reports. (2013, June 6). Setting Facebook privacy controls [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWlyut4zsko

Wall Street Journal. (2012, January 25). Google, privacy and what it means for you [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7M_FOhXXKM

Learning Activities (Nongraded)

Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit
them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.

Review the following case study, GE Becomes a Digital Firm: The Emerging Industrial Internet, which
discusses the difficulties faced by large, capital-intensive firms in traditional industries becoming digital firms.
There is a link within the case study to an accompanying video. (A transcript can be accessed for the video

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 6

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the video title on the right. Closed-captioning
can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of the video.)

After watching the video and reviewing the case study, answer the video case questions at the end.

**## ManagementInformationSystemsITC5301UnitIIDB.docx**

2

Management Information Systems ITC 5301 Unit II Discussion Board

Your initial post should be at least 300 words in length.

Your initial post should include at least one APA-formatted scholarly, professional, or textbook reference with accompanying in-text citation to support any paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material.

There has been much legal activity regarding web postings and social media sites like Twitter. Celebrities, elected officials, and many others have taken a stand to complain about being bullied and mocked on social media. These lawsuits are alleging slander and libel against people who posted comments that targeted individuals and businesses. Discuss whether you think these lawsuits have merit and why. Do you think there should be business accountability measures or consequences associated with the things you might say and do on the internet if you use a business network or are on company time? Explain your rationale.

**## UnitIIStudyGuide.pdf**

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Explain how information technology systems influence organizational strategies.
3.1 Explain an organization’s ability to use information technology to achieve strategic goals.

4. Evaluate the prevailing ethical issues of information systems.

4.1 Describe how new technology trends may cause ethical dilemmas.

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 3: Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Unit Lesson

Information Systems: What This Means to Your Organization

For most of us, it is not that difficult to understand certain information technology (IT) concepts. Most of us
use our hardware and equipment fairly well. We know how to download apps on our smartphones. We know
about the systems and applications that we use at work. We may not know all of the details or inner workings
of what information flows where, but we have a good idea of how things work. If we were clueless, we would
not be of much value to our organizations, would we?

Organizations and Strategy

Let’s take this to a more abstract level. How would you answer this question: How is IT used toward the
success of your organization? You might rattle off some reasons relating to the availability of the Internet,
which allows e-mails to flow so that there is connectivity between customers and service representatives. You
might say that your organization has several servers and databases that house data and a security team with
security tools that ensure the safety of the data. You might mention that all the applications allow you to
service your customers in faster, more efficient ways. If you are a little more tech savvy at your organization,
you might even bring up more advanced topics or newer innovations, such as the ones listed below.

• e-commerce
• supply chain management systems (SCM)
• customer relation management systems (CRM)
• SharePoint
• cloud collaboration
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP)
• big data
• data mining
• expert systems

Are the items described here IT tools? Yes, they are used to help make everyone’s lives and jobs easier,
faster, more efficient, and more effective, but let’s ask the question again: How is IT used toward the success
of your organization?

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE
Organizations, Strategy, Ethics, and
Social Issues in Information Systems

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Organizations must deal with a lot of information about every aspect of the business—from customers to
vendors, employees, invoices, payments, inventory, and services. Our information systems make it possible
to organize this information and keep up with it all. Business processes deal with the work that is performed in
our organizations so that we can produce something of value. The performance of our business depends on
how well our business processes work. Our business processes can add extreme value to our organization
because they can be a competitive strength. They can also drag our value down if they are not working well
for the organization. Thus, IT can work in many ways to improve our business processes by introducing
better, faster, and more efficient methods of performing tasks in our business processes.

Imagine how much time and money is saved if a thousand invoices are e-mailed to customers rather than
being mailed via the postal mail. How much time does it take a person to stuff and stamp 1,000 envelopes?

Now, if you look at how technology supports not only business processes but also management groups and
functional groups, you can start to see that they link together in a way that serves to improve organizational
performance.

Value in improved performance. Organizations search every day for ways to improve their performance,
production output, and transaction processing. In recent years, technology has advanced to the point that it
supports enterprise-level systems, applications, networks, collaboration, and so on. There are even enterprise
social networking tools now.

Influence of IT on business-level strategy. Basically, a strategy addresses what needs to be accomplished.
With any organization, the strategic objectives will be similar. The organizational leaders will want to be
number one in their market, increase sales revenue, decrease costs, or strengthen their customer base. It is
certainly not a stretch to understand that a business wants to be the best, the fastest, the most profitable, the
most efficient, the most customer-friendly, and so on.

You must also have a good understanding of what influences organizations. Organizations have a culture.
They have politics, social structure, rules, values, norms, and people. The reality is that technology affects all
aspects of organizations. For example, information systems can have a huge economic impact on an
organization. IT is very costly, but the benefits can influence big increases in revenue or substantial
decreases in costs.

IT can have cultural and social impacts on organizations as well. A large technology implementation can
mean a change in the mindset for many employees who are resistant to change. Imagine that you know
technology implementation will increase the efficiency of operations by 50%, but this may also mean that
fewer employees will be needed. Imagine that you are one of the employees whose job is at risk due to a new
automation. This realization may cause a lot of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety for employees. All of these
factors play an important part in understanding the role that IT plays in organizations. For IT to be beneficial
and for organizations to be successful, organizations have to have clear strategies. Organizations have to
take full advantage of any competitive advantages and understand models such as Porter’s competitive
forces model. Once organizational leaders understand where the business needs to be, they can set clear,
actionable steps to get there. Those steps will involve technology because organizations need to have IT
resources and IT capabilities. It will also involve an organization’s ability to utilize its IT resources and create
value in conjunction with its other assets and resources.

Finally, it is important to note that organizations have to be able to align their technologies with their business
strategies and goals. It does the organization no good to have a well-defined strategy if it does not have the IT
resources and capabilities to meet its goals. On the other hand, if the organization does not have a well-
defined strategy that is appropriate for the business, IT tools will be of little help to reach meaningless goals.

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

As Laudon and Laudon (2022) note, “ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting
as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behavior” (p. 122). The fact is that information
systems open the door for many opportunities to make ethical choices—probably as many, if not more, than
any other area in business.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Why is this statement true? Think about it. IT professionals will likely have access to information more than
anyone else in the organization. Information such as employee information, customer information, and sales
transactions are stored in database tables. A human resources (HR) representative will have access to
employee information. A salesperson or customer service representative will have access to sales information
or basic customer information. An accounts receivable person will have access to customers’ financial
information.

Some IT professionals will have access to all information. Additionally, many organizations have personal
usage rules regarding the personal use of company website, Internet, and e-mail assets. This usually means
that organizations will have applications that log usage into databases. Most of the time, employees’ actual e-
mail text is stored as well. Managers can request reports if they feel an employee is abusing the usage rules,
but who has access to the data at any given time? Some IT professionals will.

Who should have access to this information? Can you imagine what would happen if anyone could access all
of this information? Imagine the unethical, disgruntled employee who was passed over for a promotion
accessing the web logs and seeing that the newly promoted coworker who is married has been researching
dating websites.

There is a lot of trust placed in IT professionals to house and manage all kinds of sensitive information and
not abuse it themselves. This is where the basics of ethics for IT professionals starts. Even within IT, there
are access controls that limit what can be done to the data. In other words, most IT professionals could not
delete their web logs. This is all a part of having good security policies, which we will discuss later.

Even if you, as an IT professional, accidentally view confidential or sensitive information, you have to know
what your ethical responsibility is with regard to that information. Should you inform management that you
saw that information? Another example might be knowing the company’s financial information. It is unethical
and potentially illegal to use that information for your own financial gain.

Ethical Challenges

Let’s examine how technology has advantages and disadvantages by examining the table below from
Chapter 4 in your eTextbook. Technology can create new opportunities to enhance people’s lives, but it can
also be a detriment to improving lives. Technology, such as the Internet, has challenged our understanding of
ethical and privacy issues. Improvements in communications technology, such as high-speed broadband and
globalization, have brought the topic of ethics and privacy to the forefront.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

(Laudon & Laudon, 2022)

Data collected by smart cars and smart device tracking features can be used by auto insurance companies to
monitor the insured’s driving habits and use the data to justify increasing insurance rates. This software can
monitor driver activities such as texting while driving, traveling speeds, alertness, and other driving patterns.
This information can then be used by law enforcement against offenders to support traffic violation charges,
especially if the driver was involved in an accident.

Your individual shopping profile on your favorite online shopping website can be analyzed using advanced
data analytics to reveal your shopping habits and associations that are valuable to corporations, government
agencies, or other entities that use the data to advertise. Frequent visits to a movie theater could reveal
information about your entertainment habits. However, frequent visits to a hospital or care facility would also
reveal far more sensitive information about private medical data that you would not want to share with the rest
of the world.

Summary

This unit covered many of the ethical considerations that you may face at home and in the workplace. In the
workplace, there is always more to consider, so most organizations have ethics training for this purpose. At
home, individuals will need to be knowledgeable about how information is gathered and to whom that
information is given.

Reference

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. L. (2022). Management information systems: Managing the digital firm (17th ed.).

Pearson.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Suggested Unit Resources

In order to access the following resources, click the links below.

To reinforce the concepts from this unit, you are encouraged to review the following:

• Chapter 3 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 3 PowerPoint presentation)

• Chapter 4 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 4 PowerPoint presentation)

The following article discusses ethical issues in information systems.

Mason, R. O. (1986). Four ethical issues of the information age. MIS Quarterly, 10(1), 5–12.

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bsu&AN=4679471&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following article examines how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms.

Wu, S. P.-J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T.-P. (2015). How information technology governance mechanisms and

strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business
and IT managers. MIS Quarterly, 39(2), 497–519.
https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bth&AN=102375761&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following video cases mentioned in your eTextbook augment the information presented in the assigned
chapter readings. You are encouraged to review the Chapter 3 and 4 video cases linked below.

A transcript can be accessed for each video within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the
video title on the right. Closed-captioning can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of each
video.

Akamai Technologies. (2019, October 1). Customer story: Riot games [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqkqjAc5aA

Akamai Technologies. (2019, July 2). Customer story: Roblox [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XU_5XdYPo

CNET. (2015, February 25). CNET News – What the FCC net neutrality rules will mean for Internet users

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84r3qd19tZU

Vox. (2015, February 26). The FCC’s new net neutrality rules, explained in 172 seconds [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKPacCuXsw

Consumer Reports. (2013, June 6). Setting Facebook privacy controls [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWlyut4zsko

Wall Street Journal. (2012, January 25). Google, privacy and what it means for you [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7M_FOhXXKM

Learning Activities (Nongraded)

Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit
them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.

Review the following case study, GE Becomes a Digital Firm: The Emerging Industrial Internet, which
discusses the difficulties faced by large, capital-intensive firms in traditional industries becoming digital firms.
There is a link within the case study to an accompanying video. (A transcript can be accessed for the video

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 6

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the video title on the right. Closed-captioning
can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of the video.)

After watching the video and reviewing the case study, answer the video case questions at the end.

**## ManagementInformationSystemsITC5301UnitIIDB.docx**

2

Management Information Systems ITC 5301 Unit II Discussion Board

Your initial post should be at least 300 words in length.

Your initial post should include at least one APA-formatted scholarly, professional, or textbook reference with accompanying in-text citation to support any paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material.

There has been much legal activity regarding web postings and social media sites like Twitter. Celebrities, elected officials, and many others have taken a stand to complain about being bullied and mocked on social media. These lawsuits are alleging slander and libel against people who posted comments that targeted individuals and businesses. Discuss whether you think these lawsuits have merit and why. Do you think there should be business accountability measures or consequences associated with the things you might say and do on the internet if you use a business network or are on company time? Explain your rationale.

**## UnitIIStudyGuide.pdf**

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit II

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

3. Explain how information technology systems influence organizational strategies.
3.1 Explain an organization’s ability to use information technology to achieve strategic goals.

4. Evaluate the prevailing ethical issues of information systems.

4.1 Describe how new technology trends may cause ethical dilemmas.

Required Unit Resources

Chapter 3: Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy

Chapter 4: Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Unit Lesson

Information Systems: What This Means to Your Organization

For most of us, it is not that difficult to understand certain information technology (IT) concepts. Most of us
use our hardware and equipment fairly well. We know how to download apps on our smartphones. We know
about the systems and applications that we use at work. We may not know all of the details or inner workings
of what information flows where, but we have a good idea of how things work. If we were clueless, we would
not be of much value to our organizations, would we?

Organizations and Strategy

Let’s take this to a more abstract level. How would you answer this question: How is IT used toward the
success of your organization? You might rattle off some reasons relating to the availability of the Internet,
which allows e-mails to flow so that there is connectivity between customers and service representatives. You
might say that your organization has several servers and databases that house data and a security team with
security tools that ensure the safety of the data. You might mention that all the applications allow you to
service your customers in faster, more efficient ways. If you are a little more tech savvy at your organization,
you might even bring up more advanced topics or newer innovations, such as the ones listed below.

• e-commerce
• supply chain management systems (SCM)
• customer relation management systems (CRM)
• SharePoint
• cloud collaboration
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP)
• big data
• data mining
• expert systems

Are the items described here IT tools? Yes, they are used to help make everyone’s lives and jobs easier,
faster, more efficient, and more effective, but let’s ask the question again: How is IT used toward the success
of your organization?

UNIT II STUDY GUIDE
Organizations, Strategy, Ethics, and
Social Issues in Information Systems

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 2

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Organizations must deal with a lot of information about every aspect of the business—from customers to
vendors, employees, invoices, payments, inventory, and services. Our information systems make it possible
to organize this information and keep up with it all. Business processes deal with the work that is performed in
our organizations so that we can produce something of value. The performance of our business depends on
how well our business processes work. Our business processes can add extreme value to our organization
because they can be a competitive strength. They can also drag our value down if they are not working well
for the organization. Thus, IT can work in many ways to improve our business processes by introducing
better, faster, and more efficient methods of performing tasks in our business processes.

Imagine how much time and money is saved if a thousand invoices are e-mailed to customers rather than
being mailed via the postal mail. How much time does it take a person to stuff and stamp 1,000 envelopes?

Now, if you look at how technology supports not only business processes but also management groups and
functional groups, you can start to see that they link together in a way that serves to improve organizational
performance.

Value in improved performance. Organizations search every day for ways to improve their performance,
production output, and transaction processing. In recent years, technology has advanced to the point that it
supports enterprise-level systems, applications, networks, collaboration, and so on. There are even enterprise
social networking tools now.

Influence of IT on business-level strategy. Basically, a strategy addresses what needs to be accomplished.
With any organization, the strategic objectives will be similar. The organizational leaders will want to be
number one in their market, increase sales revenue, decrease costs, or strengthen their customer base. It is
certainly not a stretch to understand that a business wants to be the best, the fastest, the most profitable, the
most efficient, the most customer-friendly, and so on.

You must also have a good understanding of what influences organizations. Organizations have a culture.
They have politics, social structure, rules, values, norms, and people. The reality is that technology affects all
aspects of organizations. For example, information systems can have a huge economic impact on an
organization. IT is very costly, but the benefits can influence big increases in revenue or substantial
decreases in costs.

IT can have cultural and social impacts on organizations as well. A large technology implementation can
mean a change in the mindset for many employees who are resistant to change. Imagine that you know
technology implementation will increase the efficiency of operations by 50%, but this may also mean that
fewer employees will be needed. Imagine that you are one of the employees whose job is at risk due to a new
automation. This realization may cause a lot of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety for employees. All of these
factors play an important part in understanding the role that IT plays in organizations. For IT to be beneficial
and for organizations to be successful, organizations have to have clear strategies. Organizations have to
take full advantage of any competitive advantages and understand models such as Porter’s competitive
forces model. Once organizational leaders understand where the business needs to be, they can set clear,
actionable steps to get there. Those steps will involve technology because organizations need to have IT
resources and IT capabilities. It will also involve an organization’s ability to utilize its IT resources and create
value in conjunction with its other assets and resources.

Finally, it is important to note that organizations have to be able to align their technologies with their business
strategies and goals. It does the organization no good to have a well-defined strategy if it does not have the IT
resources and capabilities to meet its goals. On the other hand, if the organization does not have a well-
defined strategy that is appropriate for the business, IT tools will be of little help to reach meaningless goals.

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

As Laudon and Laudon (2022) note, “ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting
as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behavior” (p. 122). The fact is that information
systems open the door for many opportunities to make ethical choices—probably as many, if not more, than
any other area in business.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 3

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Why is this statement true? Think about it. IT professionals will likely have access to information more than
anyone else in the organization. Information such as employee information, customer information, and sales
transactions are stored in database tables. A human resources (HR) representative will have access to
employee information. A salesperson or customer service representative will have access to sales information
or basic customer information. An accounts receivable person will have access to customers’ financial
information.

Some IT professionals will have access to all information. Additionally, many organizations have personal
usage rules regarding the personal use of company website, Internet, and e-mail assets. This usually means
that organizations will have applications that log usage into databases. Most of the time, employees’ actual e-
mail text is stored as well. Managers can request reports if they feel an employee is abusing the usage rules,
but who has access to the data at any given time? Some IT professionals will.

Who should have access to this information? Can you imagine what would happen if anyone could access all
of this information? Imagine the unethical, disgruntled employee who was passed over for a promotion
accessing the web logs and seeing that the newly promoted coworker who is married has been researching
dating websites.

There is a lot of trust placed in IT professionals to house and manage all kinds of sensitive information and
not abuse it themselves. This is where the basics of ethics for IT professionals starts. Even within IT, there
are access controls that limit what can be done to the data. In other words, most IT professionals could not
delete their web logs. This is all a part of having good security policies, which we will discuss later.

Even if you, as an IT professional, accidentally view confidential or sensitive information, you have to know
what your ethical responsibility is with regard to that information. Should you inform management that you
saw that information? Another example might be knowing the company’s financial information. It is unethical
and potentially illegal to use that information for your own financial gain.

Ethical Challenges

Let’s examine how technology has advantages and disadvantages by examining the table below from
Chapter 4 in your eTextbook. Technology can create new opportunities to enhance people’s lives, but it can
also be a detriment to improving lives. Technology, such as the Internet, has challenged our understanding of
ethical and privacy issues. Improvements in communications technology, such as high-speed broadband and
globalization, have brought the topic of ethics and privacy to the forefront.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 4

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

(Laudon & Laudon, 2022)

Data collected by smart cars and smart device tracking features can be used by auto insurance companies to
monitor the insured’s driving habits and use the data to justify increasing insurance rates. This software can
monitor driver activities such as texting while driving, traveling speeds, alertness, and other driving patterns.
This information can then be used by law enforcement against offenders to support traffic violation charges,
especially if the driver was involved in an accident.

Your individual shopping profile on your favorite online shopping website can be analyzed using advanced
data analytics to reveal your shopping habits and associations that are valuable to corporations, government
agencies, or other entities that use the data to advertise. Frequent visits to a movie theater could reveal
information about your entertainment habits. However, frequent visits to a hospital or care facility would also
reveal far more sensitive information about private medical data that you would not want to share with the rest
of the world.

Summary

This unit covered many of the ethical considerations that you may face at home and in the workplace. In the
workplace, there is always more to consider, so most organizations have ethics training for this purpose. At
home, individuals will need to be knowledgeable about how information is gathered and to whom that
information is given.

Reference

Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. L. (2022). Management information systems: Managing the digital firm (17th ed.).

Pearson.

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 5

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

Suggested Unit Resources

In order to access the following resources, click the links below.

To reinforce the concepts from this unit, you are encouraged to review the following:

• Chapter 3 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 3 PowerPoint presentation)

• Chapter 4 PowerPoint Presentation
(PDF for Chapter 4 PowerPoint presentation)

The following article discusses ethical issues in information systems.

Mason, R. O. (1986). Four ethical issues of the information age. MIS Quarterly, 10(1), 5–12.

https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bsu&AN=4679471&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following article examines how organizational value is created through IT governance mechanisms.

Wu, S. P.-J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T.-P. (2015). How information technology governance mechanisms and

strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business
and IT managers. MIS Quarterly, 39(2), 497–519.
https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dire
ct=true&db=bth&AN=102375761&site=ehost-live&scope=site

The following video cases mentioned in your eTextbook augment the information presented in the assigned
chapter readings. You are encouraged to review the Chapter 3 and 4 video cases linked below.

A transcript can be accessed for each video within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the
video title on the right. Closed-captioning can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of each
video.

Akamai Technologies. (2019, October 1). Customer story: Riot games [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REqkqjAc5aA

Akamai Technologies. (2019, July 2). Customer story: Roblox [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XU_5XdYPo

CNET. (2015, February 25). CNET News – What the FCC net neutrality rules will mean for Internet users

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84r3qd19tZU

Vox. (2015, February 26). The FCC’s new net neutrality rules, explained in 172 seconds [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKPacCuXsw

Consumer Reports. (2013, June 6). Setting Facebook privacy controls [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWlyut4zsko

Wall Street Journal. (2012, January 25). Google, privacy and what it means for you [Video]. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7M_FOhXXKM

Learning Activities (Nongraded)

Nongraded Learning Activities are provided to aid students in their course of study. You do not have to submit
them. If you have questions, contact your instructor for further guidance and information.

Review the following case study, GE Becomes a Digital Firm: The Emerging Industrial Internet, which
discusses the difficulties faced by large, capital-intensive firms in traditional industries becoming digital firms.
There is a link within the case study to an accompanying video. (A transcript can be accessed for the video

ITC 5301, Management Information Systems 6

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE
Title

within the YouTube player by clicking on the three dots below the video title on the right. Closed-captioning
can be turned on by clicking the “cc” icon at the bottom of the video.)

After watching the video and reviewing the case study, answer the video case questions at the end.