Management Information Systems IP One - Essay Example

?Management Information Systems IP One Number: CASE STUDY: What’s the Buzz on Smart Grids? The current electricity infrastructure in the United States is obsolete and inefficient. The grid does not provide any information relating to energy consumption rates by consumers, which makes it difficult to establish more efficient strategies for energy distribution by power companies. The current electricity infrastructure also offers few ways to manage power supplied by alternative energy sources, which are crucial for “going green” concept. Smart grid on the other hand uses digital technology to deliver energy. Unlike the current electricity infrastructure, Smart grid allows to flow back and forth between electric power suppliers and consumers thus allowing smart decision-making by both suppliers and consumers. It enhances transparency, reliable and also ensures lower energy consumption. To manage information flow in smart grids, technology is required. There is need to establish network and switches for power management, sensor and monitoring gadgets to follow energy usage and supply trends. The grids should also require systems to supply consumers and suppliers of energy with usage data, communication systems to transmit data along the whole energy supply system as well as systems to run programmable devices when energy is cheaper. The most probable challenge that could hamper the development of smart grids is opposition by consumer advocates. Consumer advocates are out to stop smart grids if it increases energy cost for consumers who are unwilling or unable to pay to use Web portals. Their argument is that smart grids interfere with consumers’ right to use devices without revealing facts about their usage to others. The implementation of smart grids will ensure sustainability of energy supply through facilitation of uses of renewable energy sources (Friedrichs, 2011). I would want my house or community to be fitted with smart grids for many reasons. It is believed that smart grids enable smart decision-making on energy consumption. It reduces energy cost and pollution. Smart grids can also detect sources of power outages faster and precisely at individual house level, which will enable utilities to respond swiftly and efficiently to problems. It will allow households to generate their own power. CASE STUDY 2: Collaboration and Innovation at Procter & Gamble Procter & Gamble’s business strategy is to develop new brands and maintain brand recognition with distinct business innovation. Collaboration and innovation facilitate development of new ideas, which is crucial for product development and improvement of existing products to meet emerging market needs. Because the company’s business centers on brand creation and administration, it is crucial for the company to establish collaboration between researchers, marketers and administrators. Procter & Gamble focuses on consumer goods, which demand extensive research for better innovative approaches to develop new ideas. For a giant corporation like Procter & Gamble, identifying effective collaboration approaches is often an intimidating task. For this reason, the company has established information systems that promote effective collaboration and innovation to facilitate product development ideas. The collaboration technologies that the company is using include: e-mail: this is a presumable tool for communication that enables the sender to control information flow. Many people are accustomed to e-mails. Blogs: this collaboration method is open and permits any interested party to access its contents. It also enables interested users to comments on the blog contents. SharePoint: it enables to share bookmarks and tag content with descriptive phrases that feature in successive searches and enhance social networks of coworkers to enable them locate and share information effectively. InnovationNet: contain numerous search related documents (5 million) in digital format accessible through a browser gateway. Cisco telePresence: the benefits of this collaborative approach include: saves transportation cost considerably, enables efficient information and idea flow and allows faster decision-making. P& G’s main challenge in adopting Cisco TelePresence technology was ensuring that the studios were constructed according to given specifications in every geographical assorted location where they were inaugurated. Some collaborative technologies are slow to catch up at the company because of resistance by employees on proposed change. Many employees want to stick with e-mails and are reluctant to adopt new collaborative technologies whose success depends on their usage level. P&G’s old process for writing up and distributing the results of a research experiment was not collaborative enough. E-mail could allow senders to control information flow but there was high possibility of failing to send information to those who need it most and send the information to those who are not supposed to see it. Contrarily, the new processes facilitate effective sharing of information and attract comments from interested users. The other ways P&G could use collaboration to foster innovation is through forming strategic partnership with other outstanding organizations in order to benefit from technologies present partnering companies not found in P&G. it can also develop customer relationship management site that facilitate interaction with customers to know what they would like the company to change or add to its products. CASE STUDY 3: HOW MUCH DO CREDIT CARD COMPANIES KNOW ABOUT YOU? Credit companies are seeking to gather information about their customers and use the information gathered to target potential promotions for new products more precisely. Information systems aid this strategy by enabling the companies to develop codes for credit card usage so that they can study each customer at glance and determine the risk involved in issuing credit to such customers. Mining credit card records enables credit companies to forecast cardholders with the highest risk. Fine-grained profiles developed by credit companies enable them to manipulate their customers. The data enable the companies to examine the correlation between certain card usage and the customer’s ability to pay off credit card balances and additional debts. The information gathered on customers is used to deny or reduce credit available for customers exhibiting high risk potential. Some credit companies utilize information about cardholders to establish personal contact with clients indebted to them and lure them to pay off their balances. The practice of using customer information regarding card usage by credit companies to limit or deny them credit is unethical. Companies generalize particular purchases, which might lead to inaccurate categorization of responsible cardholders as risky. Credit companies also use state of residence to categorize customers as risky, which is quite unjust and an invasion of privacy (Keenan, 2005). The law enforcement prohibits the practice by credit companies. This is evident in the case of FTC vs. CompuCredit, where CompuCredit lost the battle. According to Bidgoli (2011), this act by credit companies is an invasion of privacy. New U.S legislation prohibits Card companies from raising interest rates for any reason on their clients. Customers have the right to keep private information to themselves. CASE STUDY 4: THE PERILS OF TEXTING Five moral dimensions of information systems include: information rights and obligations, property rights, Accountability and control, system quality and quality of life (Ferreira, Erasmus & Groenewald, 2009; Joseph & Mohapatra, 2009). The moral dimension of information systems identified in the text involved in this case is responsibility and control. Many road accidents among other problems associated with using cell phones exemplify individual responsibility. Using cell phones while driving is brought out in the case study as an immoral act as it is a leading cause of road fatalities. Poor decision-making is the main cause of inappropriate use of cell phones. In the political dimension, some legislators believe it is outside the state’s mandate to prohibit poor-decision making. An ethical principle to guard against poor decision-making is implementing laws and regulation that prohibit texting while driving. References Bidgoli, H. (2011). MIS. Boston, MA: Course Technology Cengage Learning. Ferreira, E.J., Erasmus, A.W. & Groenewald, D. (2009). Administrative management. Lansdowne [South Africa]: Juta Academic. Friedrichs, M. (February 7, 2011). Can We Make Our Infrastructure Smarter? Retrieved on January 10, 2013 from http://consideronline.org/2011/02/07/can-we-make-out-infrastructure-smarter/ Joseph, P.T. & Mohapatra, S. (2009).Management Information Systems In Knowledge Economy. New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Keenan, K.M. (2005). Invasion of Privacy: a Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO Read More