The role of Current Technologies

As the developments of technology and Internet, the role of IS/IT in organizations become more and more important. According to many researches and experiments, we can see that both the Organizational Environments and the Technology Environments are very important for an organisation, which wants to be succeed on its businesses.

Organizational Environments [1]: those forces outside its boundaries that can impact it, forces can change over time and are made up of Opportunities and Threats. Opportunities are opening for managers to enhance revenues or open markets, just like new technologies, new markets and ideas. Threats are issues that can harm an organisation, e.g. economic recession, oil shortages. Organizational Environments includes the External Organizational Environment, the Internal Organizational Environment, and the New Work Enviroment.

IT "enables" advances in organisational performance, Technology Environment is needed in business processed and performance. Technology Environment includs Software trends, Hardware trends, Data trends, and Communications trends.

Personally speaking, I think there are three current technologies: The External Organizational Environment, The Internal Organizational Environments, and the Software trends, which have the most impact on the way work is done.

All outside factors that may affect an organization make up the external environment. The external environment is divided into two parts: Directly interactive, and Indirectly interactive. [2]

1> Directly interactive: This environment has an immediate and firsthand impact upon the organization. A new competitor entering the market is an example.
2> Indirectly interactive: This environment has a secondary and more distant effect upon the organization. New legislation taking effect may have a great impact. For example, complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to update their facilities to accommodate those with disabilities.

The External Organizational Environment includes the new digital economy (B2B,B2C), Globalisation (the world isa marketplace), Ecosystems -- web of relationships around companies, The Idea Economy (ideas, IP and knowledge), Deregulation -- entry of new companies, Faster Business Cycles: information move fasters, thus increasing the speed at which events take place and the pace at which individuals and organisations respond to events.

An organization's Internal Environment [3] is composed of the elements within the organization, including current employees, management, and especially corporate culture, which defines employee behavior. Although some elements affect the organization as a whole, others affect only the manager. A manager's philosophical or leadership style directly impacts employees. Traditional managers give explicit instructions to employees, while progressive managers empower employees to make many of their own decisions. Changes in philosophy and/or leadership style are under the control of the manager. The following sections describe some of the elements that make up the internal environment.

The Internal Organizational Environment includes skills and talent shortages, demand-pull systems: customer drieven business processes, team-based working, and so on. The internal environment will impact the internal organization, if these internal environments can develop well, then the organization also will develop in a correct direction and make itself being successful.

The Sofeware trends in technology environment will become more and more important in oganization:

1>It improve the productivity of in-house programmers who created transaction processing systems.

2>Programming issues:

-- Modular and structured programming techniques.

-- Life cycle development methodologies and software engineering.

-- Introduction of rigorous project management techniques.

3>Prototyping: quick development of a mock-up

4>Purchasing software became viable alternative to in-house development

5>Paying attention to applications other than transaction processing

6>End users develop their own systems.

Overall, all of those environment are very important in oganization whether organizational environments or technology environment.

References:

[1] Warren Weber (8/1/00), "Organizational Environment". Retrieved January 31, 2009, from the World Wide Web:

http://www.csupomona.edu/~wcweber/301/301slide/ch03301/index.htm

[2] "Principles of Management: The External Environment". Retrieved January 31, 2009, from the World Wide Web:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/The-External-Environment.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8859.html

[3] "Principles of Management: The Internal Environment". Retrieved January 31, 2009, from the World Wide Web:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/The-Internal-Environment.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8860.html

CNY Assignment

External Organizational Environment(EOE) means the environment outside the organization but have the influence on the organization. The EOE including new digital economy, Globalisation, The Idea Economy, Deregulation, and Fatser Business Cycles.Each of the element would impact the organization's MIS, as the external environment change, the headquaters of the organization should come out new ideas to adapt the new environment so that the organization can grow well.

An organizaion's internal environment is composed of the elements within the orgnization, including current employees, management, and especially corporate culture, which defines employee behavior[1]. The processes of the organization are all based on employees' efforts, so the interrelationship among staff is very important to the organization. And now many organization using outsourcing during the operating, this is need the corporation between people inside and outside the organization.

Nowadays, the work is quite differ from old days, it becomes something new. The work is more complexity and need highly interconnections, and becoming electroniclly such as workflow system and GDSS, and the manage of the organization is change. As these developments of the work, people should more sensetive with the new work environment, they should improve themselves to adapt to the new environment.

The technology environment including hardware, software and data trends. As the hardware shows that batch processing predominant, online system emerged, and the development of Client-Server computing. The developmemts on software has improved the productivity of in-house programmers, endusers also can develop their own system. The purchasing of software becoming viable alternative to ih-house development. The data trends show the more developed file management, database management and how an organization manage its data. And its also include how the data transfer and knowledge management.

In my opinion, all these environment elements would impact on the MIS, and some may emerge the improvements on the organization's MIS. When the external environment changes, some of the prats in the MIS may out-of-date and can not adapt to the new elements. And the manager in the organization must come out the new ideas that can well corporate with the new developed outside environment. As the cooperation is becoming more and more important in today's work routine, employees in the organization should have the sense that they must work together. Not like 10 or 20 years ago, people do things alone. Now the work is more about coop. The tighter the work team, the more successful they would be. The business is not only in one place, it's gloally, so when
people go on work ,they must realise it. With the high developed technology, the work process is now electroniclly and the way is much different from traditional way. So people must catch up the step that the new technology develops.

Highly developed computer science make the organization's technology environment quite different. From the first computer till now, the hardware has experienced a great evolution,
nowadays, most of the jobs rely on computers. Today, most of the organization has its own website that help its process. The development on software allow more and more programmers doing in-house job, they can just stay at home and do their job. And the software trends also create new jobs for people who are good at programming, becos the endusers also can develop their own system.
Now,many programmers just stay at home, search the internet and find people who wnat to develop the system, and do the systems for those who need, make money in this way. The data trends show the information management of the organization,espeiclly the database management. The database now is becoming more and more important in the organization, and it is also developed in a high speed. Data warehousing, data mining, database distribution are some hot issues and these make the information management much easier.

In a word, the organizational and technology environment will give influece on the organization's MIS, and also would change some style of the current work routine.

Reference:
[1] The Internal Environment, retrieved Jan 31, from the world wide website: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/The-Internal-Environment.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8860.html