It reaches a situation when information has to be considered political in the manner in which it is managed.
The effective control of information gives an organization power. It can be argued that information is kind of a medium of exchange or currency which is passed from one department to another in an organization and between organizations. Like currency, information is bound to rise or decline in value and can generate resources for IS professionals. Information is first processed as data which are mere raw facts and after the raw facts attain the state of information, it is used as knowledge which can be applied in solving various problems (Gulledge, Haszko, n.d.). It should always be perceived that information is a political processes and failure to do so can be limiting in career for the nave IS professional. It is however important for companies, departments and even individuals to create various political structures in order to control and protect the management of information assets (Finney, 1999). The politics of information is a general perception on how information is managed, allocated and distributed as a scarce resource.
As a good organization politics, the Overstock.coms Chief Information Officer, would not have been too apologetic. It is important to recognize the information management as a political system serving various functions in an organization. It is not right to ignore them just the way Shawn Schwegman, the CIO of Overstick.com did and made excess admission to the mistakes which himself was not directly involved in. failure in the information systems can be caused by an array of factors beginning with the basic hardware and software for managing information resources (Paul, n.d.). Problems may even arise from any stage of the information processing and the CIO should be ready to identify where these weak points all begin.
The analysis of these loose points should help in blaming appropriately on the cause of system failures. The problems of Overstocks failure are all related to updates which Shawn considers to be caused by himself since there was a failure to architect a system able to handle real-time updates appropriately. The interactions of Vcommerce database and the Oracle database are said to be horribly architected and the system handling inventory updates, images, orders, status changes and data are written to very small files that are sent to and fro between different systems. It is the sending mechanism which Shawn blames to assume that the received file was actually processed (Schuman, 2005). This problem, Shawn puts the blame on himself and he admits that he is the one behind Overstock.coms failure.
The CIO, embarrassed on what happens to the Overstock.com, sends an open note to main business partners taking to himself all the blames on the failure of a number of technology failures at Overstock.com. Prior to making such a decision to humbly be sorry for a mistake himself did not commit, Shawn would have taken sometime to study the political structures of information systems. It is however not time to say I wish I knew, it is time to correct the mistakes which Shawn did and what any CIO might be exposed in during the process of automating the roles as a CIO. The learning of the political information structures will by far avoid the blunders which arise in the management of information system. Russ (1999) identifies different forms of these political information structures which exist in different organization. After learning which structure exists in a given organization, one can execute functions as per the stipulated codes. Perhaps the most common paradigm of political information structure in organization is the technocratic utopianism where there is a heavy concentration on data categorization and information modeling. The political structure focuses on giving value to the utilization of the emerging hardware and also attempts to address the whole information inventory of an organization. In technocratic utopianism, the IS department considers itself to be the owner of data and no one else has control over it.
Mr. Shawn might have to choose this system in order to have enough control over the information processing. Anarchy is another structure where everyone has to fend for his or her own self and there is a very high usage of individual PCs. In anarchy, there is a limited data sharing capacity which makes information to be restricted on one department or individual and employees consider their stash of data as something like a personal asset which should not be shared with anyone. Anarchy structure shares some similarity to the feudalism type where information is restricted to a department although it can be shared and controlled within a department. The only information which is regarded as unique can be broadcast outside the department otherwise information is kept with utmost strictness.
The other characteristic of feudalism is that the data vocabulary is often unique. The two systems, anarchy and feudalism may not compare with monarchy in the strictness (CIO.com, n.d.). In monarchy, the rules for management of information are only dictated by a single executive and the control of information is tightly centralized. Federalism underscores the need for information sharing to be through negotiation which might not work so well with the modern role of CIO. Basically, a competent CIO should have a keen eye to determine the environment he is working in so that to establish the working criteria in managing the information system of an organization and avoid failures.
The effective control of information gives an organization power. It can be argued that information is kind of a medium of exchange or currency which is passed from one department to another in an organization and between organizations. Like currency, information is bound to rise or decline in value and can generate resources for IS professionals. Information is first processed as data which are mere raw facts and after the raw facts attain the state of information, it is used as knowledge which can be applied in solving various problems (Gulledge, Haszko, n.d.). It should always be perceived that information is a political processes and failure to do so can be limiting in career for the nave IS professional. It is however important for companies, departments and even individuals to create various political structures in order to control and protect the management of information assets (Finney, 1999). The politics of information is a general perception on how information is managed, allocated and distributed as a scarce resource.
As a good organization politics, the Overstock.coms Chief Information Officer, would not have been too apologetic. It is important to recognize the information management as a political system serving various functions in an organization. It is not right to ignore them just the way Shawn Schwegman, the CIO of Overstick.com did and made excess admission to the mistakes which himself was not directly involved in. failure in the information systems can be caused by an array of factors beginning with the basic hardware and software for managing information resources (Paul, n.d.). Problems may even arise from any stage of the information processing and the CIO should be ready to identify where these weak points all begin.
The analysis of these loose points should help in blaming appropriately on the cause of system failures. The problems of Overstocks failure are all related to updates which Shawn considers to be caused by himself since there was a failure to architect a system able to handle real-time updates appropriately. The interactions of Vcommerce database and the Oracle database are said to be horribly architected and the system handling inventory updates, images, orders, status changes and data are written to very small files that are sent to and fro between different systems. It is the sending mechanism which Shawn blames to assume that the received file was actually processed (Schuman, 2005). This problem, Shawn puts the blame on himself and he admits that he is the one behind Overstock.coms failure.
The CIO, embarrassed on what happens to the Overstock.com, sends an open note to main business partners taking to himself all the blames on the failure of a number of technology failures at Overstock.com. Prior to making such a decision to humbly be sorry for a mistake himself did not commit, Shawn would have taken sometime to study the political structures of information systems. It is however not time to say I wish I knew, it is time to correct the mistakes which Shawn did and what any CIO might be exposed in during the process of automating the roles as a CIO. The learning of the political information structures will by far avoid the blunders which arise in the management of information system. Russ (1999) identifies different forms of these political information structures which exist in different organization. After learning which structure exists in a given organization, one can execute functions as per the stipulated codes. Perhaps the most common paradigm of political information structure in organization is the technocratic utopianism where there is a heavy concentration on data categorization and information modeling. The political structure focuses on giving value to the utilization of the emerging hardware and also attempts to address the whole information inventory of an organization. In technocratic utopianism, the IS department considers itself to be the owner of data and no one else has control over it.
Mr. Shawn might have to choose this system in order to have enough control over the information processing. Anarchy is another structure where everyone has to fend for his or her own self and there is a very high usage of individual PCs. In anarchy, there is a limited data sharing capacity which makes information to be restricted on one department or individual and employees consider their stash of data as something like a personal asset which should not be shared with anyone. Anarchy structure shares some similarity to the feudalism type where information is restricted to a department although it can be shared and controlled within a department. The only information which is regarded as unique can be broadcast outside the department otherwise information is kept with utmost strictness.
The other characteristic of feudalism is that the data vocabulary is often unique. The two systems, anarchy and feudalism may not compare with monarchy in the strictness (CIO.com, n.d.). In monarchy, the rules for management of information are only dictated by a single executive and the control of information is tightly centralized. Federalism underscores the need for information sharing to be through negotiation which might not work so well with the modern role of CIO. Basically, a competent CIO should have a keen eye to determine the environment he is working in so that to establish the working criteria in managing the information system of an organization and avoid failures.
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