Essential Business & Information Systems Concepts Defined

Key Concepts in Business and Information Systems

Processing

Converts raw input into a meaningful form.

Digital Firm

An organization where nearly all significant business relationships with customers, suppliers, and employees are digitally enabled and mediated.

Major Business Functions

These include core areas such as production, finance and accounting, and human resources, essential for an organization's operation.

Complementary Assets

Assets required to derive value from a primary investment, such as technology or infrastructure.

World Wide Web

A service provided by the internet that uses universally accepted standards for storing, retrieving, formatting, and displaying information in a page format.

Networking and Telecommunications Technology

Technology that transfers data from one physical location to another.

Operational Management

Responsible for monitoring the daily activities of the business.

Socio-Technical Systems Optimization

Achieving optimal organizational performance by jointly optimizing both the social and technical systems used in production.

Senior Management

Responsible for the overall performance and strategic direction of the firm.

Management Science

Emphasizes the development of models for decision-making and management practices.

Space Shifting

Work takes place in a global workshop as well as within national boundaries, accomplished physically wherever in the world it is best performed.

Computer Science

Concerned with establishing theories of computability, methods of computation, and methods of efficient data storage and access.

Culture

A set of assumptions, values, and ways of doing things that has been accepted by most of an organization's members.

Management’s Job

To make sense of the many situations faced by organizations, make decisions, and formulate action plans to solve organizational problems.

Psychologists

Study information systems with an interest in how human decision-makers perceive and use formal information.

Information

Data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings.

Sociologists

Study information systems with an eye toward how groups and organizations shape the development of systems, and how systems affect individuals, groups, and organizations.

Computer Hardware

The physical equipment used for input, processing, and output activities in an information system.

Management Information Systems (MIS)

Deals with behavioral issues as well as technical issues surrounding the development, use, and impact of information systems used by managers and employees in the firm.