Chapter 1 Information Systems in Global Business Today
1) Internet advertising is growing at approximately 10 percent a year.Answer: TRUE
2) Developing a new product, fulfilling an order, and hiring a new employee are examples of business processes.Answer: TRUE
3) A fully digital firm produces only digital goods or services.Answer: FALSE
4) A business model describes how a company produces, delivers, and sells a product or service to create wealth.Answer: TRUE
5) Information technology (IT) consists of all the hardware that a firm needs to use in order to achieve its business objectives, whereas information systems consist of all the software and business processes needed.Answer: FALSE
6) Computers are only part of an information system.Answer: TRUE
7) Information systems literacy describes the behavioral approach to information systems, whereas computer literacy describes the technical approach.Answer: FALSE
8) The dimensions of information systems are management, organizations, and information technology.Answer: TRUE
9) Knowledge workers assist with paperwork at all levels of the firm.Answer: FALSE
10) There are four major business functions: Sales and marketing; manufacturing and production; finance and accounting; and information technology.Answer: FALSE
11) In order to understand how a specific business firm uses information systems, you need to know something about the hierarchy and culture of the company.Answer: TRUE
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12) Business processes are logically related tasks for accomplishing tasks that have been formally encoded by an organization.Answer: FALSE
13) A substantial part of management responsibility is creative work driven by new knowledge and information.Answer: TRUE
14) Intranets allow firms to work easily with third-party suppliers and vendors.Answer: FALSE
15) An IT infrastructure provides the platform on which the firm can build its information systems.Answer: TRUE
16) UPS's use of Web-based tools that allow customers to embed UPS functions such as tracking and cost calculations into their own Web sites was an information systems solution used to achieve customer intimacy.Answer: TRUE
17) Studies have consistently shown that firms who invest greater amounts in information technology receive greater benefits than firms that invest less.Answer: FALSE
18) Government and private sector standards are examples of complementary social assets required to optimize returns from IT investments.Answer: TRUE
19) A firm that invests in efficient business processes is making an investment in organizational complementary assets.Answer: TRUE
20) The behavioral approach to information systems leaves aside technical solutions to instead analyze the psychological, social, and economic impacts of systems.Answer: TRUE
Chapter 2 Global E-Business and Collaboration
1) Operational management is responsible for directing the day-to-day operations of the business and therefore needs transaction-level information.Answer: TRUE
2) You would use an MIS to help decide whether to introduce a new product line.Answer: FALSE
3) Online collaboration tools eliminate the need for global firms to have synchronous
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collaboration.Answer: TRUE
4) Transaction processing systems are most commonly used by the senior management level of an organization.Answer: FALSE
5) A transaction processing system is a computerized system that performs and records the daily routine transactions necessary to conduct business.Answer: TRUE
6) A hotel reservation system is a typical example of a management information system.Answer: FALSE
7) Management information systems typically support nonroutine decision making.Answer: FALSE
8) Enrolling employees in benefits plans is a business process handled by the finance and accounting function.Answer: FALSE
9) Functional systems that support business processes within a single functional group, such as human resources, are being phased out in favor of cross-functional systems.Answer: TRUE
10) Managers need TPSs to monitor the status of internal operations and the firm's relations with the external environment.Answer: TRUE
11) Most MISs use sophisticated mathematical models or statistical techniques.Answer: FALSE
12) Decision-support systems help managers make decisions that are unique, rapidly changing, and not easily specified in advance.Answer: TRUE
13) Decision-support systems use internal information as well as information from external sources.Answer: TRUE
14) ESSs are designed to serve the middle management of the organization.Answer: FALSE
15) ESSs are designed to incorporate data about external events, but they also draw summarized information from internal MIS and DSS.Answer: TRUE
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16) A Skype conference call using VOIP and webcams is an example of a remote, synchronous collaboration tool.Answer: TRUE
17) ESSs are designed primarily to solve specific problems.Answer: FALSE
18) Information supplied by an enterprise system is structured around cross-functional business processes.Answer: TRUE
19) Enterprise systems often include transactions with customers and vendors.Answer: TRUE
20) Supply chain management systems are more externally oriented than enterprise systems.Answer: TRUE
Chapter 3 Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy
1) An adhocracy is a knowledge-based organization where goods and services depend on the expertise and knowledge of professionals.Answer: FALSE
2) From the point of view of economics, information systems technology can be viewed as a factor of production that can be substituted for traditional capital and labor.Answer: TRUE
3) A firm can be said to have competitive advantage when they have higher stock market valuations than their competitors.Answer: TRUE
4) The competitive forces model was created for today's digital firm.Answer: FALSE
5) Research has shown that only 25% of firms are able to align their information technology with their business goals.Answer: TRUE
6) Customers are one of the competitive forces that affect an organization's ability to compete.Answer: TRUE
7) A transparent marketplace means that there is high product differentiation.Answer: FALSE
8) The effect of the Internet has been to raise bargaining power over suppliers.
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Answer: TRUE
9) In an efficient customer response system, digital answering systems are used to monitor and respond to customer inquiries.Answer: FALSE
10) In the strategy of product differentiation, information systems are used to enable new products and services.Answer: TRUE
11) Mass customization is a form of mass production.Answer: TRUE
12) Strong linkages to customers and suppliers decrease switching costs.Answer: FALSE
13) In the age of the Internet, Porter's traditional competitive forces model is still at work, but competitive rivalry has become much more intense.Answer: TRUE
14) In the value chain model, primary activities are most directly related to the production and distribution of the firm's products and services that create value for the customer.Answer: TRUE
15) The value chain model classifies all company activities as either primary or support.Answer: TRUE
16) The idea driving synergies is that when the output of some units can be used as inputs to other units, the relationship can lower cost and generate profits.Answer: TRUE
17) All organizations have bedrock, unassailable assumptions that define their goals and products.Answer: TRUE
18) In a demonstration of network economics, the more people that use Adobe software and related products, the greater the value of the software.Answer: TRUE
19) The term business ecosystem describes the interplay between the various organizational forces within a firm.Answer: FALSE
20) The use of Internet technologies allows companies to more easily sustain competitive advantage.Answer: FALSE
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Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
1) Advances in data storage have made routine violation of individual privacy more difficult.Answer: FALSE
2) The last step in analyzing an ethical issue should be to identify the stakeholders people who have a vested interest in the outcome of the decision.Answer: FALSE
3) Professionals take on special rights and obligations because of their special claims to knowledge, wisdom, and respect.Answer: TRUE
4) Privacy is the right to be left alone when you want to be, without surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations.Answer: TRUE
5) Most American and European privacy law is based on a set of five principles called COPPA.Answer: FALSE
6) A cookie is a small file containing information about you and your Web activities that is deposited on your hard disk by a Web site.Answer: TRUE
7) Spyware is software that comes hidden in downloaded applications and can track your online movements.Answer: TRUE
8) Most Internet businesses do very little to protect the privacy of their customers.Answer: TRUE
9) P3P encrypts or scrambles e-mail or data so that it cannot be read illicitly.Answer: FALSE
10) Protection for trade secrets is enforced at the federal level.Answer: FALSE
11) Copyright is the legal protection afforded intellectual property, such as a song, book, or video game.Answer: TRUE
12) Trade secret law protects the actual ideas in a work product, not just their manifestations.Answer: TRUE
13) The drawback to copyright protection is in passing stringent criteria of nonobviousness.
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Answer: FALSE
14) According to the courts, in the creation of software, unique concepts, general functional features, and even colors are protectable by copyright law.Answer: FALSE
15) The key concepts in patent law are originality, novelty, and value.Answer: FALSE
16) Despite the passage of several laws defining and addressing computer crime, accessing a computer system without authorization is not yet a federal crime.Answer: FALSE
17) Insofar as software is essentially an intangible good, producers of software cannot be held liable for any damages that their software unintentionally causes.Answer: FALSE
18) The European Parliament has passed a ban on unsolicited commercial messaging.Answer: TRUE
19) The most common type of computer-related RSI is CTS.Answer: TRUE
20) Technostress is a computer-related malady whose symptoms include fatigue.Answer: TRUE
Chapter 5 IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
1) IT infrastructure technology is purely a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise.Answer: FALSE
2) Client/server computing is a widely used form of centralized processing.Answer: FALSE
3) In green computing, reducing computer power consumption is a top priority.Answer: TRUE
4) N-tier computing is a multi-tier, load-balancing scheme for Web-based applications in which significant parts of Web site content, logic, and processing are performed by smaller, less expensive servers located nearby the user.Answer: TRUE
5) Application server software is responsible for locating and managing stored Web pages.Answer: FALSE
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6) An application server may reside on the same computer as a Web server or on its own dedicated computer.Answer: TRUE
7) Enterprise integration requires software that can link disparate applications and enable data to flow freely among different parts of the business.Answer: TRUE
8) The mainframe market has grown steadily over the past decade.Answer: TRUE
9) The operating system is used to manage the computer's activities.Answer: TRUE
10) Like an ASP, a Web hosting service provides shared applications to subscribed users, but does this through a Web portal.Answer: FALSE
11) SANs create large central pools of storage that can be rapidly accessed and shared by multiple servers.Answer: TRUE
12) Autonomic computing is implemented primarily with enterprise or ISP servers.Answer: FALSE
13) Java software is designed to run on any computer or computing device, regardless of the specific microprocessor or operating system it uses.Answer: TRUE
14) Web services can exchange information between two different systems regardless of the operating system or programming languages on which the systems are based.Answer: TRUE
15) Whereas XML is limited to describing how data should be presented in the form of Web pages, HTML can perform presentation, communication, and data storage tasks.Answer: FALSE
16) Hypertext markup language specifies how text, graphics, video, and sound are placed on a Web page document.Answer: TRUE
17) The collection of Web services that are used to build a firm's software systems constitutes what is known as a service-oriented architecture.Answer: TRUE
18) Today most business firms have discontinued operating their legacy systems, replacing these
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with inexpensive Web services and hosted software.Answer: FALSE
19) Scalability refers to the ability of a computer, product, or system to expand to serve a large number of users without breaking down.Answer: TRUE
20) TCO refers to the original cost of purchased technology: both hardware and software.Answer: FALSE
Chapter 6 Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management
1) A grouping of characters into a word, a group of words, or a complete number is called a record.Answer: FALSE
2) Each characteristic or quality describing a particular entity is called an attribute.Answer: TRUE
3) Program-data dependence refers to the coupling of data stored in files and software programs that use this data such that changes in programs require changes to the data.Answer: TRUE
4) A DBMS separates the logical and physical views of data. Answer: TRUE
5) Every record in a file should contain at least one key field.Answer: TRUE
6) Many applications today require databases that can store and retrieve multimedia.Answer: TRUE
7) One of the drawbacks to OODBMS are that they cannot work with applets.Answer: FALSE
8) OODBMS are slower than relational DBMS.Answer: TRUE
9) A data dictionary is a language associated with a database management system that end users and programmers use to manipulate data in the database.Answer: FALSE
10) In a relational database, complex groupings of data must be streamlined to eliminate awkward many-to-many relationships.Answer: TRUE
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11) A data warehouse may be updated by a legacy system.Answer: TRUE
12) A data warehouse is typically comprised of several smaller data marts.Answer: FALSE
13) OLAP is a key tool of BI.Answer: TRUE
14) OLAP enables users to obtain online answers to ad-hoc questions in a fairly rapid amount of time, except when the data are stored in very large databases.Answer: FALSE
15) Predictive analysis is synonymous with data mining.Answer: FALSE
16) In a Web-based database, middleware is used to transfer information from the organization's internal database back to the Web server for delivery in the form of a Web page to the user.Answer: TRUE
17) The disadvantage of using a Web interface for a database is that it typically requires substantial changes to the internal database.Answer: FALSE
18) Common Gateway Interface is a specification for processing data on a Web server.Answer: TRUE
19) Data administration is a special organizational function that manages the policies and procedures through which data can be managed as an organizational resource.Answer: TRUE
20) Data cleansing is the same process as data scrubbing.Answer: TRUE
Chapter 7 Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology
1) Telephone networks are fundamentally different from computer networks.Answer: TRUE
2) Increasingly, voice, video, and data communications are all based on Internet technology.Answer: TRUE
3) To create a computer network, you must have at least two computers.Answer: TRUE
4) An NOS must reside on a dedicated server computer in order to manage a network.
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Answer: FALSE
5) A hub is a networking device that connects network components and is used to filter and forward data to specified destinations on the network.Answer: FALSE
6) In a client/server network, a network server provides every connected client with an address so it can be found by others on the network.Answer: TRUE
7) Central large mainframe computing has largely replaced client/server computing.Answer: FALSE
8) Circuit switching makes much more efficient use of the communications capacity of a network than does packet switching.Answer: FALSE
9) A protocol is a standard set of rules and procedures for the control of communications in a network.Answer: TRUE
10) Two computers using TCP/IP can communicate even if they are based on different hardware and software platforms.Answer: TRUE
11) In a ring topology, one station transmits signals, which travel in both directions along a single transmission segment. Answer: FALSE
12) Coaxial cable is similar to that used for cable television and consists of thickly insulated copper wire.Answer: TRUE
13) Fiber-optic cable is more expensive and harder to install than wire media. Answer: TRUE
14) The number of cycles per second that can be sent through any telecommunications medium is measured in kilobytes.Answer: FALSE
15) The Domain Name System (DNS) converts IP addresses to domain names.Answer: TRUE
16) VoIP technology delivers video information in digital form using packet switching. Answer: TRUE
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17) Web 3.0 is a collaborative effort to add a layer of meaning to the existing Web in order to reduce the amount of human involvement in searching for and processing Web information. Answer: TRUE
18) Wi-Fi enables users to freely roam from one hotspot to another even if the next hotspot is using different Wi-Fi network services.Answer: FALSE
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19) WiMax has a wireless access range of up to 31 miles.Answer: TRUE
20) RFID has been exceptionally popular from the technology's inception because of its low implementation costs.Answer: FALSE
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