Introduction to Management Information Systems
Management information systems (MIS) became a serious field of study largely because of the development of computers and computer-related technology MB, like many other computer terms, represents an evolving concept. To fully appreciate what people might mean when they refer to the term information system, we need to first turn the calendar back a few years, to the early 1950s.
The Emergence of Management Information Systems In June 1951, a memorable event took place in the history of modem computing. The U.S. Bureau of the Census purchased a computer called Univac I. This machine was the first electronic computer produced by a business machine company (Remington Rand) specifically for business purposes. Until that time, computers had been found only in laboratories,
where they were used for scientific and defense work.
The predominant business applications of the 1950s were payroll, billing, and various other types of routine clerical and accounting operations.These transaction processing applications (so named because they involve the processing of financial accounting transactions and similar functions) were relatively easy to structure using the limited number of and typically hard-to-use computer languages of the 1950s. Also, these
computer applications were relatively easy to cost justify to upper management. If, for example, a computer system could do the work of a hundred bookkeepers, each of whom earned $6,000 annually, a company would recover a cost of $600,000 within a year. The terms electronic data processing (EDP) and automatic data processing (ADP) were frequently used to describe business computing environments of the 1950s.
As computers became more common, the "electronic" and "automated" adjectives were looked upon as redundant, and the term data processing (DP) evolved to describe both types of applications.
The first computers were failure-prone, difficult to operate, and by today's standards crawled along at a snail's pace. Computer professionals often had their hands full just in getting accurate paychecks and billing statements out on time. By the mid-1960s, however, the atmosphere was starting to change. Advances in disk technology made it possible to get to data faster and to access
The preceding historical developments
I In this test, we consider a management information system (MIS) to be any system that provides people with either data or information relating to an organization's operations. Management information systems support the activities of employees, owners, customers, and other key people in the organization's environment—either by efficiently processing data to assist with the transaction work load or by effectively supplying information to authorized people in a timely manner. For example, the transaction processing (data processing) sys-
| terns that perform accounting and clerical functions are information systems. So, too, are the systems that generated the periodic, pre-planned reports characterizing the 1960s (which we will call management reporting systems (MRS)
| from now on). Decision support systems, office information systems, and [ knowledge-based systems should also be viewed as facets of an organization's information system, along with inter-organizational electronic data interchange systems that strategically link a firm to its customers or supplier
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