Right From the Beginning, Information Systems Were Essay

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Right from the beginning, information systems were perceived as tools that could increase efficiency. Quinn (1976) prescribed increased use of information systems in public service in order to improve efficient delivery and to realize cost savings. Information systems do this by storing and retrieving information more quickly and effectively, resulting in faster response times and greater accuracy simultaneously.

Fast forward to today and we can see the many different ways in which this efficiency is being applied in society. For example Kauffman, Weber and Wu (2012) note that information systems can be a component of competitive strategy. The ability to gather, store and process information can be a competitive weapon if a company can do it better than its competitors. The concept of big data reflects the power of information systems to handle vast amounts of information and from that develop competitive advantage when your capabilities are greater than competitors at identifying trends, marketing opportunities and areas for improved efficiency (McGuire, Manyika & Chui, 2012).

A third benefit to information systems is that allow for much greater communication flow, in particular the rapid transmission of data around the world. Gurbaxani and Whang (1991) note that as the world becomes more globalized, the ability to move information anywhere facilitates incredible changes in the way we communicate and do business. Today, companies can transmit data to suppliers anywhere in the world instantly, and this in turn has accelerated the process of globalization and enhanced lives everywhere. Information is now available at the push of a button, and this increased global knowledge is helping us to find solutions to many problems.

While in general it is reasonable to say that information systems have been an incredibly positive development for society, there are some downsides associated with them. First, the transfer of information has some downsides. Where it benefits many by increasing the pace of globalization, the reality is that the pace of globalization and information flow is vastly greater than the pace of change in other parts of society. As a result, there are people whose lives have been made worse, for example when they lose a job, as the result of the way that information systems have restructured society.

Another negative aspect of information systems is the negative impact that information systems have on privacy. When information is codified and stored in a format that makes it easy to transport or transmit, this creates more opportunities for privacy breach. Filip (2007) notes that privacy challenges are one of the biggest security issues to have arisen in the age of information systems. People's personal information today is store in dozens of places, and these can if security is weak be accessed remotely. This increases privacy risk compared with the pre-information systems era.

Another downside is that where outsourcing is encouraged by the fact that it can be done, it is something that often creates challenges for organizations, as they try to manage their information from the other side of the planet. For example, there are intercultural issues, technical issues and communication issues that increase the challenges of managing vast amounts of complex information, often doing so using third party vendors. It is important for organizations to remember that although information systems are powerful, they also represent a challenge with respect to handling complexity, mining data, maintaining privacy and security and managing international work teams that handle sensitive data.

2.

Transaction cost theory reflects the idea that all transactions have costs and to increase efficiency requires lowering transaction costs. This theory is often used in managerial economics to understand the true cost of something, and find ways to eliminate that cost. The theory has also been applied to information technology outsourcing. The idea is that transaction costs are related to the costs and outcomes associated with information systems outsourcing (Alaghehband, Rivard, Wu and Goyette, 2011).

With respect to total impact on the organization, transaction cost theory informs the decision that organizations must make with respect to the "make or buy" decision with respect to outsourcing, but it also reflects a cost-benefit analysis of information systems in general. Today's information systems can be exceptionally complex and costly, perhaps beyond their benefits. The market then must seek out solutions that fit within the needs of all companies, and fill in those gaps. Businesses are only willing to invest in information systems to the degree that those systems will bring with the promised benefits. Firms will price out the value of increased organization and efficiency, and weigh that against all of the different costs of the IT. The transaction cost theory is challenging to apply in practice, however, because it is difficult to quantify in an economic model the real world impacts of information systems implement as there are many non-discrete variables that need to be taken into consideration (Ghoshal & Moran, 1996).

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Agency cost theory reflects the idea that agents are intermediaries that perform tasks, and that there is a cost associated with this. This view holds that information technology, in general, reduces agency costs. The technology has an upfront cost and minimal ongoing costs, but the speed at which it recalls and transmits information is much faster than if a person did it, so the agency cost should be lower even with the higher investment cost. In most situations, agency costs are relatively low with information technology. Those lower costs not only encourage greater use of information technology, but provide the firm with more savings that it can reinvest in other areas

I do not see agency costs and transaction costs as being contradictory. If anything, these two concepts are complementary. Both are different ways of viewing and evaluating the cost of information systems. They can both be used to evaluate the opportunity costs associated with an investment decision in information technology. An agency cost is, if anything, a subset of transaction costs. There may be other transaction costs besides agency costs, but the agency costs will often be a component, even where hardware is the intermediary in the handling of information.

Ideally, information systems reduce the overall costs associated with handling information, both in terms of the financial cost and the time cost as well Agency costs refer specifically to the cost of the intermediary, while transaction costs reflect the total costs of the transaction. Both are applicable, especially when management is looking at whether information systems will be good for the organization. It is important for an organization to understand what both of these costs are and make its decision accordingly.

3.

HTML is hypertext markup language. What this does is that the markup adds labels to text. The output device -- usually a browser -- reads the markup in this tells the output device how to proceed. HTML was developed in the early days of the Internet and therefore has a number of different advantages. It is cheap, easy to use and it is supported by all major browsers, allowing widespread use, even by people who are not otherwise programming professionals. Basic webpages can be created in HTML (No author, 2000).

XML is called extensible markup language, which is a markup language for documents containing structured information (Ibid). XML is used for describing other languages. It is also considered to be simple and easy to learn, supports rich media and allows the user to create his or her own tags, something that cannot be done in HTML. One of the differences is that XML describes content, while HTML describes presentation.

These differences lead to a number of comparable points for HTML and XML. Both can be used to create similar documents but there are advantages and disadvantages to each. HTML is known to be simple (which can be either an advantage or disadvantage depending on your perspective), but is a weak presentation tool, a weak markup tool, is unstable and is rudimentary. By contrast, XML is that it is a little bit more customizable than HTML, that it is fully designed for use on the Internet while HTML predates the world wide web. XML is also not owned by any vendor, but it requires a processing application, is newer and there is the thought that in future it will require different browsers (Ibid).

Both of these languages are used to build web pages, but they differ in complexity and therefore use. HTML is the most basic language of web page writing, and it is therefore also very limited. XML is more complex, but still relatively simply. XML was purpose-built for web pages, and this is something that makes XML more practical. It is used for the construction of more sophisticated web pages. Some of the added features of XML are that it can define new tags at will, the tags can be nested to arbitrary depth and that XML tags may also contain a description of the grammar (Perugini, 2003).

There are other differences as well. For example, XML uses browser-side scripts, while the scripts in HTML are server-side. XML also provides….....

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