What’s New in Management Information Systems?

Plenty. In fact, there’s a whole new world of doing business using new tech­nologies for managing and organizing. What makes the MIS field the most exciting area of study in schools of business is the continuous change in tech­nology, management, and business processes. Five changes are of paramount importance.

IT Innovations. A continuing stream of information technology innovations is transforming the traditional business world. Examples include the emergence of cloud computing, the growth of a mobile digital business platform based on smartphones and tablet computers, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), business analytics, machine learning systems, and the use of social networks by managers to achieve business objec­tives. Most of these changes have occurred in the past few years. These innovations are enabling entrepreneurs and innovative traditional firms to create new products and services, develop new business models, and transform the day-to-day conduct of business. In the process, some old businesses, even industries, are being destroyed while new businesses are springing up.

New Business Models. For instance, the emergence of online video ser­vices for streaming or downloading, such as Netflix, Apple iTunes, and Amazon, has forever changed how premium video is distributed and even created. Netflix in 2018 attracted more than 125 million subscribers world­wide to what it calls the “Internet TV revolution.” Netflix has moved into premium TV show production with nearly 1,000 original shows such as American Vandal, Suburra, The Crown, Friends From College, No Country For Old Men, House of Cards, and Orange Is the New Black, challenging cable and broadcast producers of TV shows, and potentially disrupting cable network dominance of TV show production. Apple’s iTanes now accounts for 67 percent of movie and TV show downloads and has struck deals with major Hollywood studios for recent movies and TV shows. A growing trickle of viewers are unplugging from cable and using only the Internet for entertainment.

E-commerce Expansion. E-commerce generated about $700 billion in revenues in 2017 and is estimated to grow to nearly $950 billion by 2020. E-commerce is changing how firms design, produce, and deliver their prod­ucts and services. E-commerce has reinvented itself again, disrupting the traditional marketing and advertising industry and putting major media and content firms in jeopardy. Facebook and other social networking sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr, along with Netflix, Apple Music, and many other media firms, exemplify the new face of e-commerce in the twenty-first century. They sell services. When we think of e-commerce, we tend to think of selling physical products. While this iconic vision of e-commerce is still very powerful and the fastest-growing form of retail in the United States, growing up alongside is a whole new value stream based on selling services, not goods. It’s a services model of e-commerce. Growth in social commerce is spurred by powerful growth of the mobile platform: 85 percent of Face- book’s users access the service from mobile phones and tablets. Informa­tion systems and technologies are the foundation of this new services-based e-commerce. Mobile e-commerce hit $229 billion in 2017 and is growing at 30 percent a year.

Management Changes. The management of business firms has changed: With new mobile smartphones, high-speed wireless Wi-Fi networks, and tablets, remote salespeople on the road are only seconds away from their managers’ questions and oversight. Management is going mobile. Manag­ers on the move are in direct, continuous contact with their employees. The growth of enterprise-wide information systems with extraordinarily rich data means that managers no longer operate in a fog of confusion but instead have online, nearly instant access to the really important informa­tion they need for accurate and timely decisions. In addition to their pub­lic uses on the web, social networking tools, wikis, and blogs are becoming important corporate tools for communication, collaboration, and information sharing.

Changes in Firms and Organizations. Compared to industrial organiza­tions of the previous century, new fast-growing twenty-first-century business firms put less emphasis on hierarchy and structure and more emphasis on employees taking on multiple roles and tasks and collaborating with others on a team. They put greater emphasis on competency and skills rather than posi­tion in the hierarchy. They emphasize higher-speed and more-accurate deci­sion making based on data and analysis. They are more aware of changes in technology, consumer attitudes, and culture. They use social media to enter into conversations with consumers and demonstrate a greater willingness to listen to consumers, in part because they have no choice. They show better understanding of the importance of information technology in creating and managing business firms and other organizations. To the extent organizations and business firms demonstrate these characteristics, they are twenty-first- century digital firms.

You can see some of these trends at work in the Interactive Session on Man­agement. Millions of managers rely heavily on the mobile digital platform to coordinate suppliers and shipments, satisfy customers, and manage their employees. A business day without these mobile devices or Internet access would be unthinkable.

Source: Laudon Kenneth C., Laudon Jane Price (2020), Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, Pearson; 16^th edition.