Module 1

Question 1

Define Information systems:

Answer 1

All the software and hardware that the firm needs to achieve its business objectives.

Two perspectives:
1)Technical perspective: a set of interrelated components that collect, process, store, and distribute information to support decision-making.
2)Organisational perspective: Not only hardware and software make up IS but also its data, organisational processes and people who use them.

Question 2

Ethics in Information Systems:

Answer 2

Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals use to make choices to guide their behavior.
One example in IS is people tracking, which is often used for marketing without consent. Behavior patterns also can be analyzed and used for marketing purposes or discrimination in the workplace.

Trends that raise ethical issues:
1)Computing power doubles every 18 months (organizations rely on computers, thus leading to a vulnerability in case of system failure)
2)Data storage costs rapidly decline (Companies can easily hold detailed data on individuals)
3)Data analysis advances (Firms can analyze more and more data on individuals and create precise profiles based on their behavior)
4)Networking advances (access to data is increasingly enabled as moving data is less costly)
5)Mobile growth (cellphones can be traced without consent)