Week 9 chapter 6 (Ethical issues)

Ethical issues

Ethics are the principles of right and wrong that people draw on when making decisions.

There are 4 approaches to decision making:

1. The utilitarian approach is choosing the path that does the most good or the least harm for the largest amount of people.
2. The rights approach involves making a decision that supports the rights of the affected people.
3. The fairness approach aims to treat all affected individuals impartially or with equality according to some specific standards.
4. The common good approach involves providing benefit to the wellbeing of all people in a community.

The ethical framework is a process to create a rational and well thought out decision.

Figure 6.1

Code of ethics are a set of guidelines to aid the decision making of a group. The three fundamental tenets of these ethics are: responsibility, accountability and liability.

Some business practises are often legal, but very often viewed as unethical. Some of these are shown below with questions to come to a conclusion of their ethicalness.

figure 6.2

Privacy issues

The right to privacy involves the protection of individuals personal details. Freedom of information is the right to access government information.

There are several threats to privacy that have arisen due to the growth and spread of modern technologies. Electronic surveillance means people’s physical and online actions can be accurately tracked, The Surveillance Devices Bill 2004 was introduced to counter this issue. As well as this the extensive use of databases mean individuals information can be gathered and stored for long periods of time and can be accessed by external sources when cybersecurity is poor. To combat this, groups that collect information have an opt in or opt out model, meaning well informed individuals have control of how their data is collected and stored.

All of this information will help me in all areas of business that I will be involved in in the future.

Gray, H., Issa, T., Pye, G., Troshani, I., Rainer, K. (2014). Management Information Systems, 1st Australian Edition. John Wiley & Sons Australia.

Week 8 chapter 5 (business intelligence)

This week we went through chapter 5 of the text book and started by looking at how the decision-maker goes through three steps while making a decision, whether it is personal or organisational. These steps are intelligence, design, and choice. 

Numerous information technologies have been employed to help managers. They are called business intelligence information systems (BI) when taken as a whole. Here is a diagram showing how technology helps the decision making process:

A primary way organisations use these BI systems is to assist with organisational change. It is utilised to radically alter a company's approach to competing in a market. BI makes the business plan possible and supports a new company model.

BI systems provide a substantial help in data analysis through apps that come in a range of formats. Decision support systems, data mining which is finding important business information in big databases, and multidimensional analysis are some of these uses.

Online analytical processing (OLAP), which is multidimensional analysis, is the process that involved rearranging data that is recorded in a dimensional format, combining data, and drilling down to a higher level of detail.

A dashboard is a great tool which offers quick access to management reports and current information. Using digitalized maps, a geographic information system (GIS) is a computer-based system that gathers, integrates, manipulates, and displays data. 

Gray, H., Issa, T., Pye, G., Troshani, I., Rainer, K. (2014). Management Information Systems, 1st Australian Edition. John Wiley & Sons Australia.

week 7 Chapter 4 (Telecommunications and networking)

 A computer network is a system that links digital devices together to allow information to be shared among them.

Analog signals are waves and digital signals are pulses Modems transform analogue and digital signals.

Signals are sent through 3 types of cables:

Protocols are processes dictating communications across a network,

When transferring large files, a protocol used is packet switching:

Internet is a global network of information while an intranet is an organisations internally accessible database. An internet service provider (ISP) connects individuals or organisations to the internet through these means:

Search engines use specified keywords to find data related to the search input. While Metasearch engines do the same thing while searching several different engines to find the relevant information.

Different types of communications: Email, Web based call centres which are customer service centres, electronic chat rooms which are digital collaboration spaces where groups can meet together and voice communications which are analog voice signals send over the internet, for example face time. These communication forms allow learning to occur online, as well as exclusively online universities.

Collaboration is when two or more people or groups accomplish things through using all parties’ skills.

Telecommuting provides an opportunity to work while not being physically present in an office,

 

 

 

 

 Gray, H., Issa, T., Pye, G., Troshani, I., Rainer, K. (2014). Management Information Systems, 1st Australian Edition. John Wiley & Sons Australia.