What's right or wrong ?!

In the business world , various organization perform vast number of activities and operations dealing with the society, business partners the governments and other countries too.  Now all of these activities need to be carried out based on some guidelines or principles.

From this context the title statement can be justified , this statement is a definition of something called Ethics.
Ethics are those principles and guidelines that help an organization employees to take decisions on whats right and whats wrong in terms of the different activities they carry out on daily bases.


Many people in mix up between ethics and law ,where not any thing unethical is illegal.
For example not giving people the chance to cross the road on non zebra line is not illegal but ethical and vice versa.


 As an organization there is a simple process of decision making of ethical matters. This process consist of 8 steps as illustrated in the picture here.

A good point to make is that there there 4 general ethical approaches/definitions :
1- Utilitarian approach > which defines ethics as actions that yield the most good or the lest harm.
2- rights approach > An ethical action is the one that best respects & protects the moral rights of the effected party who can be a customer , employee or company.
3- Fairness Approach > It states that human beings should be treated equally if not equally then fairly based on defensible standards.
 4- Common good approach > ethical actions are based on respect and compasion or welfare for everyone in the society.

Ethics in an organization : Every organization has to develop a document of  " Code of Ethics ".
This document assist members in understanding the difference between 'right' and 'wrong' and in applying that understanding to their decisions in their workplace relevant activities.

The basic principles that should be available in any ethical guide are responsibility , accountability and liability.

  Relating ethics with information technology its found that as technology advances , more ethical issues are raised.
For instance privacy issues which are concerned with individual's data that is obtained,stored and processed by an organization.     Another area of issue would be the accuracy or authenticity of the information stored/used by the organization , who can access this information. So such kind of issues are increasing as more organizations are turning automated due to cheap,easy IT solutions options available to them.

Emphasizing on an exclusive topic which is the PRIVACY. 

Now a days individuals argue regarding the extent to which an organisation can obtain,store data about public in its databases "information privacy" , however legally the user's privacy is not absolute , as in some situations "privacy" of a person must be balanced against the needs of the society.   You cant be always left alone without being asked or approached to give away information.

 In this highly advanced technology era , a users privacy is subjected to some threats like exposing you personal information on the internet through your social media networks, or some un visible electronic suveillance performers who track your browsing history and movements over the internet.

 This link bellow is a video interview with Scott Taylor, chief privacy officer in Hewlett-Packard company where he will speak about privacy and how his company tackles this topic. 

IT can produce goods and services ?!!

Information technology and systems have been very much improving to the extent that nowadays business processes are carried out by automated devices.

But the question is what's a business process ?

Its defined as a set of activities and tasks that, once completed, will accomplish an organizational goal. The process must involve clearly defined inputs and a single output. These inputs are made up of all of the factors which contribute (either directly or indirectly) to the added value of a service or product. These factors can be categorized into management processes, operational processes and supporting processes. Usually in medium sized organization you would find more than one function is involved in the process , this is called as cross-functional business process.

A very important term to be mentioned in this context is Business process management (BPM) .
Its Defined as a systematic approach to making an organization's workflow more effective, more efficient and more capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment.

The following link a a video that explains a Business Process Sample using a Flow Chart.

Every Business is surrounded by an environment that consist of a social, legal, economic, physical, and political factors that affect business activities. Significant changes in any of these factor are likely to create business pressure on the organization.
The three types of business pressures faced are: market, technology, and societal pressures.

1-Market Pressure : They comprise of the global economy , competitiveness customer power and changing nature of the workforce. Customer power influence business activity because they can always buy elsewhere , the wide variety of products and their prices over the internet forms a tangible threat to the businesses.
Workforce also impose risk on the companies as people with disabilities needed to be employed, mothers when giving birth , diversified employee platform. These are all pressures that effect the business work process.

Globalization a very common term that we hear now a days and its said that it helps at the same time effects the businesses negatively. Its defined as the shift toward a more integrated and interdependent world economy.

According to Thomas Fried Man globalization was divided into three stages/ages.

Stage one (1492 to 1800) here every country tried to excelle and deploy steam power,muscle power and horse power

Stage two (from 1800 to 2000) The driver of globalization was multinational companies and reduced transportation cost in addition more improved telecommunication methods , smart phones , fiber optics and such innovations evolved.

Stage three (from 2000 to the present) markets became more economically free and away from planned economies , net access became free in 1995 , BPM was developed , outsourcing and offshoring activities started to appear.

2- Technology Pressures which consisted of the rapid technological Innovation and Obsolescence which enforces businesses to constantly update their products. Another technological pressure is the Information Overload on the internet to the consumers and managers.

3-Societal Pressures comprise of corporate social responsibility , code of ethics and un environmental friendly activities. Political crisis and terrorism.

The following are some of the responses organizations performed towards the above pressures :

• Strategic Systems provide advantages that enable organizations to increase market share and/or profits.
• Customer Focus is the difference between attracting and keeping customers by providing superb customer service to losing them to competitors. 
• Make-to-Order is a strategy of producing customized products and services. 
• Mass Customization is producing a large quantity of items, but customizing them to fit the desire of each customer. 
• E-business and E-commerce Buying and selling products and services electronically. 

 Every Business needs to have an advantage over competitors in some measure such as cost, quality, or speed, leads to control of a market and to larger- than average profits , this is called Competitive Advantage.

Micheal Porter a scientist that developed a model of the threats to competitivness of an organization. The picture here shows of of these forces.

We are The digital Nomads.

In introduction to the course, It first explained how much now a days the society is attached to the technology and using it in their daily life activity , weather it was a smartphone for communication purposes or it was a network within an organization to connect 7 floors building to a single hub.
 In regards to organizations since the course is given to commerce students , throughout this blog the focus will be on businesses and how do they use this technology advancement in their operations.

 Information system "IS" a very common phrase we hear much , but what do it means actually.
Its a system that collects,processes,stores,analyzes and disseminates Information which then is used by an organization employees to perform their tasks within and outside the workplace.

Many people fall in a mistake of mixing between terms like Data Information Knowledge. Data are items of various numbers,letter,symbols that are unmeaningful usually stored from various business transactions and activities. Where Information is defines and organizes the data items to a meaningful manner such as addresses,ages,names or other classifications.

Finally knowledge is organized & processed information to convey understanding, experience, accumulated learning and expertise as they apply to a current problem or activity.

Types of IS:

The triangle here shows the various types of information system within an organization Starting from the top of the triangle , the first two systems are used by the top management in a company , "MIS" is the center which manages the other systems of the organization such as "Interorganizational information systems , Expert systems , Dashboards and many other. As we go to the wide part of the triangle we come across "Office support system" these are systems the are found in each department of a company such as Accounting system and so on. It also includes a "Enterprise resource planning system" which acts as a network between various systems. Lastly the "Transactional information system" this specific system is employee friendly it likes a forum of entry and recording of various business activities Eg's Barcode Scanners and so on.

IT impact on the business:

• IT reduces the number of middle managers.
•  IT changes the manager’s job i.e less paper work , no need to physically move towards employees , they use online means to obtain knowledge)
•  IT impacts employees at work , as it made many of their communications and tasks easier.
•  IT and IS has made our life's so much easier than it was before.

The following link is documentary the show how much robots have been penetrating our life.

Welcome Note

Hello dear viewers , this blog has been created as part of the "Information systems" academic course at the College of commerce and political sciences @ the Sultan Qaboos University - Sultana of Oman , Muscat. 

The blog will display some interesting summarized articles of various topics taken throughout the mentioned course.

 I wish you all a pleasant reading , all your respectful comments and opinions are of matter , so kindly don't hesitate to email me your inquires on my mail : Falfool94@gmail.com. 


 Regards and Enjoy :D