Human Systems Management

This paper will address the effects of Information Technology on the business world. Technology is increasingly playing a crucial role in the success of organizations in the information age. The impact of Information Technology on business has been enormous. Computers and the information they process and store have permeated every aspect of the business world. The fundamental role of Information Technology is to enable businesses to find new ways to drive down the costs of products, processes, and improve performance. We use examples from five different companies/industries to show the different and dramatic effects that IT can have on a business.

The television industry is using high-speed Internet to send digital dailies from location to directors and producers in Hollywood. The use of this technology eliminates the old method of dubbing tapes and then sending them via FedEx back to L.A. General Motors has used aggressive outsourcing and web-based services to increase production time. Where it used to take up to four years to get a vehicle on the market, it now takes less than two. With new management and a greater focus on quality and customer satisfaction, an aircraft company has seen its $ 15 million in debt turn into $ 243 million in revenues. These increased revenues were attained by using new software to help it get better organized. AT&T, the once Titan of the phone industry, utilized IT to get out of debt. Specifically, AT&T used web-services to allow all of its different systems to communicate. By using new software to translate three different business processes into one usable code, Cybex International used IT to fix its supply-chain mess.

Much of research has applied the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to organizational information systems (OIS) for work-related activities. The Web essentially is a large information system (IS) and is often used for non-work activities. Yet, few studies have related the TTF model and the TAM to the use of Web-based information systems for non-work activities. This paper synthesizes TTF and TAM models and tests whether they are applicable to the Web. The results show that the TAM applies very well to predict the Web user's performance, but the TTF model just produces a weak relationship. The study suggests that the performance of the Web users can be improved through (1) improving the perceived usefulness, (2) improving the perceived ease of use, and (3) having a more aligned task-technology fit.

Human organizations with human beings as interacting agents are complex adaptive systems. Such organizations continuously consume information, make decisions, and evolve with the changing environment. In this respect, all human organizations including businesses must enhance their collective intelligence in order to learn faster and compete more effectively. Thus, adopting an intelligent structure is vital to all businesses as the world moves deeper into the knowledge economy. The paradigmatic shift in thinking, structure, management and operation requires all intelligent human organizations to be designed around intelligence.

An intelligent structure encompasses an orgmind, an intangible deep component, as well as a physical component. At the physical structure perspective, being able to identify, design and develop an artificial information systems network that synchronizes well with the orgmind is critical. The connectivity of the organization, and the manner in which it behaves, communicates and collaborates, depend on the effectiveness of its information systems network and its orgmind. The orgmind which is at least the collection of all the interacting human thinking systems must be fully aware of both the internal and external environments. Inevitably, in the new economy, intelligent human organizations must be equipped with a well-integrated intelligent information network which functions similarly to the nervous system in biological beings. This study examines the current status of artificial information systems and their networks in businesses with respect to the above concepts.

Conservation of energy is one of the most important ways to achieve increased productivity in today's competitive business environment. Conservation of energy is achievable through a system design to control the use of energy and monitoring and maintenance of this control system. Maintenance management can play a key role in this regard which is the subject of this article. In order to prepare an energy management program, an organization needs to identify areas with potential for improvement and audit them periodically in a structured manner to continuously evaluate for improvements. This paper provides a framework for structured audits for energy conservation. These audits will help in assessing the current status of the energy conservation quantitatively and identify major opportunities for continuous improvement.

Electronic commerce is continuing as a thriving business for those companies that streamlined their online business processes; however, making payments over the Internet is still fearsome to customers. Although a variety of payment mechanisms have been developed, payment by credit cards remain the leading mechanism for online payments. For real-time online credit card processing, a merchant needs to install a third-party proprietary software in the merchant e-commerce server. However, many issues need to be resolved before integrating a third-party payment solution to a merchant e-commerce system. In this paper, we attempt to address the current state of the online credit card processing system, especially we discuss the available models of online real-time credit card processing systems. We also discuss several factors such as cost, complexity and security issues related to implementing such a system. The results can be extremely valuable to small businesses that are venturing into Internet commerce.