MIS ch3 Flashcards
Agency theory
Economic theory that views the firm as a nexus of contracts among self-interested individuals who must be supervised and managed.
Benchmarking
Setting strict standards for products, services, or activities and measuring organizational performance against those standards.
Best practices
The most successful solutions or problem-solving methods that have been developed by a specific organization or industry.
Business ecosystem
Loosely coupled but interdependent networks of suppliers, distributors, outsourcing firms, transportation service firms and technology manufacturers.
Competitive forces model
Model used to describe the interaction of external influences, specifically threats and opportunities, that affect an organization’s strategy and ability to compete.
Core competency
Activity at which a firm excels as a world-class leader.
Disruptive technologies
Technologies with disruptive impact on industries and businesses, rendering existing products, services, and business models obsolete.
Efficient customer response system
System that directly links consumer behavior back to distribution, production, and supply chains.
Mass customization
The capacity to offer individually tailored products or services using mass production resources.
Network economics
Model of strategic systems at the industry level based on the concept of a network where adding another participant entails zero marginal costs but can create much larger marginal gains.
Organization
A collection of rights, privileges, obligations, and responsibilities that are delicately balanced over a period of time through conflict and conflict resolution(Behavioral def). A stable, formal, social structure that takes resources from the environment and processes them to produce outputs.
Platforms
Business providing information systems, technologies, and services that thousands of other firms in different industries use to enhance their own capabilities.
Primary activities
Activities most directly related to the production and distribution of a firm’s products or services.
Product differentiation
Competitive strategy for creating brand loyalty by developing new and unique products and services that are not easily duplicated by competitors.
Routines
Precise rules, procedures, and practices that have been developed to cope with expected situations.
Strategic transitions
A movement from one level of socioltechnical system to another. Often required, when adopting strategic systems that demand changes in the social and technical elements of an organization.
Support activities
Activities that make the delivery of a firm’s primary activities possible. Consist of the organization’s infrastructure, human resources, technology, and procurement.
Switching costs
The expense a customer or company incurs in lost time and expenditure of resources when changing from one supplier or system to a competing supplier or system.
Transaction cost theory
Economic theory stating that firms grow lager because the can conduct marketplace transactions internally more cheaply than they can with external firms in the marketplace.
Value chain model
Model that highlights the primary or support activities that add a margin of value to a firm’s products or services where information systems can best be applied to achieve a competitive advantage.
Value web
Customer-driven network of independent firms who use information technology to coordinate their value chains to collectively produce a product or service for a market.
Virtual company
Organization using networks to link people, assets, and ideas to create and distribute products and services without being limited to traditional organizational boundaries or physical location.
