Review Questions ITI

8/13/2019 Review Questions ITI

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Review Questions

2. What are the key technology trends that heighten ethical concerns?

Table 5-1 identifies the four key technology trends. These trends include computer

power doubling every 18 months, rapid decline in data storage costs, data analysisadvances, and networking advances and the Internet.

The doubling of computing power every 18 months is creating a growing dependenceon systems and a consequent vulnerability to system errors, poor data quality, andfailure of critical systems. Advances in data storage techniques and rapidly decliningstorage costs provide for massive data storage capabilities on individual systems andenable the routine violation of individual privacy. Advances in datamining techniquesfor large databases allow those who are able to dominate supercomputing capacity(large businesses and governments) to increase their power over individuals through

the analysis of massive amounts of data about individuals. Advances intelecommunications infrastructure allow the movement of massive amounts of data atgreatly reduced cost, permitting the use of data and, as a result, the invasion of

privacy on a scale and precision unimaginable to us now.

3. What are the differences between responsibility, accountability, and

liability?

Responsibility means that you accept the potential costs, duties, and obligations forthe decisions you make. Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutionsthat allows the determination of who is responsible. Liability is a feature of political

systems that permits individuals to recover damages done to them by responsibleindividuals or organizations.

5. Identify and describe six ethical principles.

The six ethical principles include the golden rule, Immanuel Kant's CategoricalImperative, Descartes' rule of change, Utilitarian Principle, Risk Aversion Principle,and ethical "no free lunch" rule. The golden rule suggests doing unto others as youwould have them do unto you. Kant's Categorical Imperative suggests that if an actionis not right for everyone to take, then it is not right for anyone. Descartes' rule ofchange, also known as the slippery slope rule, suggests that if an action cannot betaken repeatedly, then it is not right to be taken at any time. The Utilitarian Principlesuggests taking the action that a

chieves the higher or greater value. The Risk Aversion Principle suggests taking theaction that produces the least harm or the least potential cost. The ethical "no freelunch" rule says that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned bysomeone unless there is a specific declaration otherwise.

8. What are the three different regimes that protect intellectual property

rights? What challenges to intellectual property rights are posed by the

Internet?


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Three different legal traditions that protect property rights are trade secret, copyright,and patent. A trade secret is any intellectual work product used for a business purpose/that can be classified as belonging to that business, provided it is not based oninformation in the public domain. The drawback to trade secret protection is that oncean idea falls into the public domain, it no longer can be protected as a trade secret. A

c/opyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property againstcopying by others for any purpose for a period of 28 years. (For work created on orafter January 1, 1978, the intellectual property is protected during the author's lifetime

pl/us 70 years after his death.) The drawback of this protection is that underlyingideas are not protected, only their manifestations in a work. A patent grants the ownera monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years. While patent protectiondoes grant a monopoly on the underlying concepts and ideas, the difficulty is passingstringent criteria of non-obviousness, originality, and novelty. The Internet makes itvery easy to widely distribute and reproduce intellectual property.

9. Why is it so difficult to hold software services liable for failure or

injury?

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to hold software producers liable for theirsoftware products because it is only when software acts as a part of a defective

product that strict liability pertains. If the software is strictly a service (not part of aproduct), these laws do not apply. As part of a product, software is still considered tobe like books, which historically are protected from liability claims by the FirstAmendment guaranteeing freedom of expression.

10. What is the most common cause of system quality problems?

The three principal sources of system quality problems are hardware and facilityfailures, software bugs and errors, and data quality. However, the most common causeof system quality problems is data quality. According to the 1998 Redman study citedin the textbook, individual organizations report data error rates ranging from 0.5 to 30

percent.

11. Name and describe four "quality of life" impacts of computers and

information systems.

The textbook describes eight "quality of life" impacts of computers and information

systems. These include balancing power, rapidity of change, maintaining boundaries,dependency and vulnerability, computer crime and abuse, employment, equity andaccess, and health risks.

Balancing power describes the shift toward highly decentralized computing, coupledwith an ideology of "empowerment" of thousands of workers and decentralization ofdecision making to lower organizational levels. The problem is that the lower-levelworker involvement in decision making tends to be trivial. Key policy decisions are ascentralized as in the past.

The rapidity of change impact suggests that information systems have increased theefficiency of the global marketplace. As a result, businesses no longer have many


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years to adjust to competition. Businesses can now be wiped out very rapidly, andalong with them, jobs.

The maintaining boundaries impact suggests that portable computers andtelecommuting have created the condition where people can take their work anywhere

with them and do it at any time. As a result, workers find that their work is cuttinginto family time, vacations, and leisure, weakening the traditional institutions offamily and friends and blurring the line between public and private life.

The dependency and vulnerability impact suggests that businesses, governments,schools, and private associations are becoming more and more dependent oninformation systems, and so they are highly vulnerable to the failure of those systems.

The computer crime and abuse impact suggests that computers have created newopportunities for committing crimes and have themselves become the target of crimes.

The employment impact suggests that redesigning business processes couldpotentially cause millions of middle-level managers and clerical workers to lose theirjobs. Worse, if reengineering actually works as claimed, these workers will not findsimilar employment because the demand for their skills will decline.

The equity and access impact suggests that access to computer and informationresources is not equitably distributed throughout society. Access is distributedinequitably along racial, economic, and social class lines (as are many otherinformation resources). Poor children attending poor school districts are less likely touse computers at school. Children from wealthy homes are five times more likely touse PCs for schoolwork than poor children. Whites are three times more likely to usecomputers at home for schoolwork than African-Americans. Potentially, we couldcreate a society of information haves and have-nots, further increasing the socialcleavages in our society.

Health risks have been attributed to computers and information technologies. Forinstance, business now spends $20 billion a year to compensate and treat victims ofcomputer-related occupational diseases. Those illnesses include RSI (repetitive stressinjury), CVS (computer vision syndrome), and technostress.


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Ch 9 Questions

Q 1:- What is the significance of telecommunications deregulation formanagers and organizations?

The telecommunication is collection of information by electronic meansusually over some distance, now the managers and organization can makevoice and videoconference with their clients or employees overall the world ina few seconds and low cost so the telecommunication help the organizations todecrease the cost of communication and the time and increase the profits andachieve their goals , mangers ask how telecommunication can reduce agencycosts by increasing the scale & scope of operations without additional

management.

Q 13:-Name and describe the telecommunications applications that can

support electronic commerce and electronic business.

Telecommunications applications that support electronic commerce andbusiness include electronic mail, groupware, voicemail, facsimilemachines, digital information services, teleconferencing,videoconferencing, and electronic data interchange.

1. Electronic mailis the computer-to-computer exchange of messages.Groupware is a specialized form of teleconferencing

2. Dataconferencingthat allows individuals working in different locationsto work together on common documents and projects.

3. Voicemailis a system that digitizes spoken messages, transmits themover a network, and stores the message for later retrieval. The systemincludes a range of capabilities including saving messages and routingthem to other parties.

4. Facsimile machinestransmit documents containing both text andgraphics over ordinary telephone lines using a scanner to digitize thedocument.

5. Teleconferencingrefers to the ability to confer with a group of peoplesimultaneously using the telephone or electronic mail groupcommunication software. Dataconferencing refers to teleconferencing inwhich two or more users are able to edit and modify data filessimultaneously.


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6. Videoconferencingis teleconferencing that includes a video portion sothat the individuals can actually see each other despite their distance.

Digital information services enable users to retrieve information, such asstock market data, periodicals, competitor data, legal research, and newsarticles, from outside the firm. Distance learning refers to education ortraining delivered over a distance to individuals in one or more locations. E-learning refers to instruction delivered online using the Internet or privatenetworks. Electronic data interchange is the direct computer-to-computerexchange between two organizations of standard business transactiondocuments such as invoices or purchase orders.

Q14:- give four examples of problems faced by enterprise networking

1. loss management control2. organizational change requirements3. hidden costs of client / silver computing4. network reliability & security

Q15:- what are some solutions to enterprise networking problems?

1. managing the change2. education & trainning3. data administration disciplines4. plannig for connectivity

Q16:- what are the principle factors to consider when developing a

telecommunication plan?

1. distance :- if communication will be large local & internal theorganization buildings & social network there little not large

2. range of services :- network must e-mail, voice mail,videoconferencing3. security :- the most secure means of long-distance communicationinline the organization owred the another communication is less

secure

4. multiple access5. utilization


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Ch 17 Questions

Q 1:- what are five major dimensions for developing internationalinformation system architecture?

1- Global environment: Understand business drivers and challenges.2- Corporate global strategy: How will your firm respond.3- Organization structure: How will you accomplish the division of labor

across a globalenvironment.

4- Management and business processes: How can you discover andmanage user requirements.

5- Technology Platforms: You need to have corporate strategy andstructure before choosingthe right technology.

Q 3:- what is meant by Global culture?

The development of common expectations, shared artifacts, and social

norms among different cultures and people.

A global culture is a shared culture in which people around the worldshare such cultural artifacts as news programs and movies. These, in turn,result in the emergence of shared social norms in such areas as properattire, proper consumption, and values concerning good and badgovernment.

Q 4:- what are the major challenges to the development of global

systems?

1- Global1- Cultural particularism: Regionalism, nationalism and language

differences2- Social expectation: Brand name expectation, work hours3- Political Laws: Transborder and privacy laws, commercial regulations

2-Specific

1- Standards: Different Electronic Data interchange, e-mail,telecommunication standards.


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2- Reliability: Phone networks not uniformly reliable3- Speed: Different data transfer speed, many slower than the US.

4- Personnel: Shortage of skilled constants.

Q 6:- Describe the four main strategies for global business and

organizational structure?

1- Domestic Exporter-Characterized by heavy centralization of corporateactivities in the home country of origin.(Near all internationalcompanies begin this way. and some move to another form)

2- Multinational-Concentrates financial management and control out ofhome base while decentralizing production, sales and marketingoperations to units in other countries. (Many financial service firmsalong with host of manufactures such as General motors, Chrysler and

Intel, fit this pattern.)

3- Franchisers-Are an interesting mix of old and new. On the one hand theproduct is created designed financed and initially produced in the homecountry, but for production specific reasons most rely heavily on foreign

personnel for further production, marketing and human resource.(Foodfranchiser such as McDonald's and KFC fits in the pattern.)

4- Transitional-Nearly all the values-adding activities are managed from aglobal perspective without reference to national borders, optimizing

sourced of supply and demand. Wherever they appear and takingadvantage of any local competitive advantage. (Few companies haveactually attained transitional status but Citicorp, Ford, Sony and othercompanies are attempting this transition)

Q 8:- what are the major management issues in developing

international systems?

1- Agreeing on common user requirements2- Introducing changes in business process3- Coordinating application development4- Coordinating software releases5- Encouraging local user to support global systems

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Review Questions ITI