The aim of this module is to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the task of managing in a large business organization and the technology that has become an essential part of that task, Information Systems.
A high level structure for the MIS module and associated web pages is shown below.
The page that you are now viewing is the Home Page for the module. From here you can go directly to pages that provide links to case studies and some general MIS related links.
There are a number of alternative textbooks for this course. The choice of which book(s) to select will depend on your background, experience and interests. Please see the list of Information Systems Books for a list of suitable books. Here you will find several books listed, each with a short review to help you decide which is the most suitable for you.
The overview page acts as a table of contents page and is one of the main ways of navigating between the different topics in the module. In addition, it provides, on a lecture by lecture basis, a list of high level topics, their associated key concepts and a brief indication of the content of the lectures. It is divided into three main sections:
This section covers the first four topics. introduction and context, set the scope of "The Real World" as far as this module is concerned, and dealing with internal change and strategic responses to change, which define a number of key terms that are used in the next section.
This section contains the next five topics: technology and organizational change provides a model for understanding technology and organizational change in the form of a simple 2 x 2 matrix. Information Systems, Knowledge Management, the bureaucratic organization and the networked organization give a broad example of each of the four categories of this matrix.
This section of the module consists of an examination of concrete examples from the real world using the concept of a virtual organization. . They are Groupware, knowledge repositories, home based working, distributed team working and communities of practice. This last section concludes with a review of the module.