Information systems and organisations

This is one of a series of subject guides published by the University. We regret that due to pressure of work the authors are unable to enter into any correspondence relating to, or arising from, the guide. If you have any comments on this subject guide, favourable or unfavourable, please use the form at the back of this guide. The University of London asserts copyright over all material in this subject guide except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. We make every effort to contact copyright holders. If you think we have inadvertently used your copyright material, please let us know. The significance and role of technology in the economy and in society has become extremely important over the last decade. People, organisations and governments enthusiastically embrace all that technology has to offer, while others are more cautious or even positively resistant. With the benefit of an historical perspective, and building on our experience of earlier and highly significant constellations of technologies, people often suggest that a small number of key technologies are shaping and changing our society and our lives. The role of information and communication technologies in shaping human activity in our private and professional lives has become more and more prominent. This course is concerned with these information and communication technologies (often abbreviated to ICT), shedding light on how they are understood, designed, applied and used within organisational settings, in particular in business organisations. The main focus of the course is on how we understand the potential of ICT to support organisational activities and hence how we design these technologies to achieve these goals. Further, this course discusses how different models used to analyse organisations' activities are affecting the shape of ICT. Here we argue that ICT designed to support organisations' activities are differently shaped as a consequence of the analytical model we have used to analyse the organisation and hence to identify what we can improve with the adoption of ICT. Thus the title of this course Information systems and organisation must be interpreted broadly. Computers are but one part of a constellation of technologies that we will consider, to which we must certainly add communications and network technologies. These technologies are important and interesting to study, but we should appreciate at the outset …