Information Systems as a Foundational Discipline for Contemporary Business

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Information Systems as a Foundational Discipline
for Contemporary Business

• ISECON 2004
• Newport, Rhode Island

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Scope Agencies

• Undergraduate education
• IT field includes
• CE
• SE
• CIS/MIS
• Agencies
• ABET
• AACSB
• Regional Accreditors

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Crisis

• 1967 Ackoff
• Database
• 1989 Banville and Landry
• Internet
• 1996 Benbassat and Zmud
• WWW
• 2002 Baskerville and Meyer
• 2003 Benbassat and Zmud
• Dot Bust

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Culminating Crisis

• 2002 Ives et. al
• Response to AACSB
• 2003 Hirscheim and Klein
• body of knowledge

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Alternative Perspective

• Information Systems is a foundational discipline
  for business
• In the 21st century, in mature economies,
  business facilitated by information technologies
  has become mainstream.

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Snapshot

• 1998-2002 E-commerce sales increased by 1000 (US
  Census, 2004)
• Comparison retail sales increased 23
• 2001-2002 E-commerce sale increased by 29
• Comparison retail sales flat
• Note does not include B2B EDI sales.

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Local Response

• Database driven websites the core
• Redesigned the required introductory course.
• Database
• Web
• Glue

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Key Ideas IS

• Data description separated from data
• Data content separated from presentation
• Mode of thinking and expression unique to
  computer systems.
• Alan Kay and Ted Nelson argued for students to
  create their own systems.

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How do others see it?

• Constituencies
• Students
• Faculty in other business disciplines

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Are students credible?

• Shawn Fanning
• Larry Page/Sergey Brin
• Jerry Yang/David Filo
• Bill Gates
• Survey of audience

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Exposure of Students vs Faculty (N12)
PriorExposure Exposure
Db design 1.9 2.7
Db manipulation 1.9 3.0
HTML 2.0 2.4
Coding 1.6 2.0
Interactivity 1.8 2.0
Publishing 1.8 2.4
No experience lt 2 gt Hands on
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BUSINESS FACULTY AND STUDENT AVERAGE SCORES
Rate the importance of  the technologies below for a contemporary business Faculty Response (Average) 1(irrelevant) 4 (critical) N 12 Student Response (Average) 1(irrelevant) 4 (critical) N 45
Database Design (determining data types, creating tables, defining relationships). 3.4 3.1
Database Manipulation (entering data, writing and running queries, producing reports). 3.5 3.3
Using HTML to create web page(s) 3.2 3.3
Using computer code to create client or server side scripts 2.7 3.2
Creating interactive web pages using HTML and code to enter or extract data from a database 3.0 3.4
Publishing a web site 3.25 3.4
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DISCIPLINE/MAJOR FACULTY AND STUDENT AVERAGE
Rate the importance of  the technologies below for your discipline/major Faculty Response (Average) 1(irrelevant) 4 (critical) N 12 Student Response (Average) 1(irrelevant) 4 (critical) N 45
Database Design (determining data types, creating tables, defining relationships). 3.4 3.0
Database Manipulation (entering data, writing and running queries, producing reports). 3.4 3.2
Using HTML to create web page(s) 2.6 3.2
Using computer code to create client or server side scripts 2.3 3.1
Creating interactive web pages using HTML and code to enter or extract data from a database 2.5 3.3
Publishing a web site 2.6 3.2
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Summary of Students vs Faculty (N12) Scores
Importance Major Importance Discipline Importance Business Importance Business
Db design 3.0 3.4 3.3 3.4
Db manipulation 3.1 3.4 3.5 3.5
HTML 3.1 2.6 3.3 3.2
Coding 2.9 2.3 3.1 2.7
Interactivity 3.0 2.3 3.3 3.1
Web Publishing 3.1 2.6 3.4 3.2
Unimportant lt 2 gt Important
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IS Future

• Zuboff Maxmin
• The revolutionary potential of the new
  technologies will be ignited only when they are
  married to a new commercial destiny expressed in
  a new enterprise logic.

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Questions?
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