Discussion: Telecommuting Organization
Discussion: Telecommuting Organization
Information Systems Must Support Organizational Systems Organizational systems represent the fundamental elements of a business—its people, work processes, tasks, struc- ture, and control systems—and the plan that enables them to work efficiently to achieve business goals. If the company’s IS fail to support its organizational systems, the result is a misalignment of the resources needed to achieve its goals. For example, it seems odd to think that a manager might add functionality to a corporate Web site without providing the training the employees need to use the tool effectively. Yet, this mistake—and many more costly ones—occurs in businesses every day. Managers make major IS decisions without informing all the staff of resulting changes in their daily work. For example, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system often dictates how many business processes are executed and the organizational systems must change to reflect the new processes. Deploying technology without thinking through how it actually will be used in the organization—who will use it, how they will use it, and how to make sure the applications chosen will actually accomplish what is intended—results in significant expense. In another example, a company may decide to block access to the Internet, thinking that it is prohibiting employees from accessing offensive or unsecure sites. But that decision also means that employees can’t access social networking sites that may be useful for collaboration or other Web‐based appli- cations that may offer functionality to make the business more efficient.
The general manager, who, after all, is charged with ensuring that company resources are used effectively, must guarantee that the company’s IS support its organizational systems and that changes made in one system are reflected in the other. For example, a company that plans to allow employees to work remotely needs an information system strategy compatible with its organizational strategy. Desktop PCs located within the corporate office aren’t the right solution for a telecommuting organization. Instead, laptop computers or tablets with applications that are accessible online anywhere and anytime and networks that facilitate information sharing are needed. Employees may want to use tablets or smart phones remotely, too, and those entail a different set of IS processes. If the orga- nization allows the purchase of only desktop PCs and builds systems accessible from desks within the office, the telecommuting program is doomed to failure.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
