The contribution of the systems approach to planning

This paper attempts a three-part review and critique of the state of the application of systems theory to planning. The first part is a critique of McLoughlin's thesis expounded in his book Urban and Regional Planning. The critique emphasises the mechanistic bias and passivity assumed in McLoughlin's exposition and suggests directions in which the systems approach may be widened and strengthened to include in particular the political process and to include dynamic profiles of variables in the systems being analysed.The second part considers how far Chadwick in his book A Systems View of Planning has developed the approach, and comes to the conclusion that while the dynamics of the model are more rigorously treated the philosophical and social science assumptions, though hinted at, are not pursued to significantly greater lengths than by McLoughlin.The third part argues that while it is necessary to pursue the assumptions of the model, it is still permissible to continue model-building before the assumptions are finally tested and agreed as accurate, so long as accurate prediction on the basis of hypothetical assumptions is not taken in itself to constitute the proof of the accuracy of the assumptions.     

Health information systems

The purpose of this article is to describe the definition and scope of health information systems. Specifically, the article seeks to identify the types and sources of data for health information systems, to present a sample of useful indicators derived from these data, to describe some techniques which may be used to portray and analyze these indicators and to discuss various categories of uses of health information systems. The health information system subject matter content is limited to five broad areas. These are: (1) status of community health, (2) utilization of health services, (3) general population and housing characteristics, (4) inventory of health facilities and health service manpower and (5) status of community environment.     

Funding information systems

Funding is an on-going, not just a one-time start-up, challenge. If we want to add "bells and whistles" to reap a full return on our hefty investments in basic computing and telecommunication structures, we need to think about funding as an integral, on-going part of our information systems.     

Management information systems in health systems agencies: some considerations.

Relevant considerations for the application of Management Information Systems theory (MIS) to public agencies are identified and discussed in this paper. The importance of the agency's environment, both external and internal, reporting structure and personnel makeup is examined. A specific application of these considerations in an MIS developed for the Health Systems Agency of Western New York is presented. Finally, the paper considers the importance of system implementation as well as system design.     

Habermas and information systems research: New directions

Habermas' critical social theory has proven to be an important and useful lens in information systems research, especially in understanding the communicative potential of information systems and in conceiving alternative approaches to information systems development. As communication and engagement have become increasingly important in the context of today's information systems, his work has perhaps even greater applicability. However, concerns that it is too utopian to apply in organizational settings have led to skepticism regarding Habermas' work. Participation by all, the “ideal speech situation” and the consensus ideal are each Habermasian requirements that have sparked this criticism.However, Habermas' work has continued to grow and evolve since the Theory of Communicative Action, the basis of much IS research drawing on his work. His contributions in discourse ethics (1990, 1993) and deliberative democracy (1998) have offered us new and important theory, and have brought to light Habermas' own clarification and evolution of his original ideas.The intent of this paper is to reopen a communicative dialog about Habermas' work. After summarizing his critical social theory, we turn to addressing our two main objectives: first, to demonstrate that evolutions in Habermasian thought have renewed its empirical possibilities and, second, to show that this new understanding constructively informs future IS research. As an illustration, we sketch out the conditions for a Habermasian-inspired requirements process and show their application to a well-studied IS development model, ETHICS (Mumford, 1983). We conclude by suggesting that Habermas' theoretical ideas can no longer be dismissed as naive, but as a constant guide to critical action — as a reference point for opening up new possibilities for communicative action in IS research and activity.     

Constructing HR information systems

Accounts of human resource information systems (HRISs) range from predominantly technical accounts, which assume that the data contained and the way it is organised are straightforward reflections of reality, to accounts which see such systems as a way of exercising disciplinary power through the creation of a new view of the organisation. These different conceptions are explored through an investigation of three organisations which were developing information systems relating to workforce skills and workplace requirements. The article focuses on different conceptualisations of skill and their significance for approaches to HR strategy. It is also concerned with the way in which managers develop and refine such information systems, and the analogy of mapping is examined as a way of understanding this process.     

精益化生产方式体现的管理新思想

精益生产方式(LP)是适应现代制造企业的一种生产组织管理模式。它和传统的流水线生产组织形式相比体现出许多新的思想。作者主要从生产组织运行体制、生产管理目标、LP系统的实施、员工激励等几个方面进行了挖掘和总结。     

会计信息系统发展趋势分析

会计具有社会性与技术性,因此社会、经济、信息技术都对会计的发展产生影响。会计的社会性决定了会计信息系统发展的方向,是向各利益相关者提供决策有用的信息。会计的技术性决定了会计信息系统发展的历程与发展趋势。本文提出,事项驱动的信息系统体系结构、物理与逻辑分离的思路,这两个管理信息系统的发展趋势,并不是会计信息系统的特有趋势。     

Formation of the information systems strategy: in a global financial services company

Over the past few decades, the potential of information systems (IS) to support organizational activities and help them gain competitive advantage has been widely recognized. At the level of strategy, there is a genre of organizational activities dedicated to realizing this potential. Methods known broadly as strategic information planning have been constructed to support such activities in organizations but these methods have not lived up their promises. Meanwhile, the use of evolutionary approaches in the application of IS in organizations have also received some attention. This paper describes and analyzes a case study of the evolution of the IS strategy within LeaseHold NV, a Dutch global leasing company. The study reveals that no IS planning was used. Instead, concepts of organizational evolution are found to be useful in analyzing the development of the IS strategy at LeaseHold.     

Material flow,material information,and the analytics of integrative enterprise information systems

Enterprise information systems (EIS) process highly abstracted information. They, nevertheless, are concerned with material systems. Information science has become increasingly analytic. This article draws attention back to the deeply embedded motive forces of ‘exchange’ and ‘money-information’ in the empiric systems that attend its analytics. The article further points to a danger that excessive abstraction can disconnect decision information from that in the processes of concern to EIS.     

Human resource information systems: Information security concerns for organizations

We explore HRIS and e-HR security by presenting information security fundamentals and how they pertain to organizations. With increasing use of enterprise systems such as HRIS and e-HR, security of such systems is an area that is worthy of further exploration. Even then, there is surprisingly little research in this area, albeit that extensive work is present in regard to HRIS privacy. While focusing on HRIS and e-HR security, we introduce aspects of HRIS and e-HR security and how it can be enhanced in organizations. A research model is also presented along with propositions that can guide future research.     

The intellectual core of enterprise information systems: a co-citation analysis

Enterprise information systems (EISs) have evolved in the past 20 years, attracting the attention of international practitioners and scholars. Although literature reviews and analyses have been conducted to examine the multiple dimensions of EISs, no co-citation analysis has been conducted to examine the knowledge structures involved in EIS studies; thus, the current study fills this research gap. This study investigated the intellectual structures of EISs. All data source documents (1083 articles and 24,090 citations) were obtained from the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Knowledge database. A co-citation analysis was used to analyse EIS data. By using factor analysis, we identified eight critical factors: (a) factors affecting the implementation and success of information systems (ISs); (b) the successful implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP); (c) IS evaluation and success, (d) system science studies; (e) factors influencing ERP success; (f) case research and theoretical models; (g) user acceptance of information technology; and (h) IS frameworks. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to visually map the resultant EIS knowledge. It is difficult to implement an EIS in an enterprise and each organisation exhibits specific considerations. The current findings indicate that managers must focus on ameliorating inferior project performance levels, enabling a transition from ‘vicious’ to ‘virtuous’ projects. Successful EIS implementation yields substantial organisational advantages.     

Issues in management information systems planning

lt has been advocated that management information Systems (MIS) planning is an important activity which an organization must perform in order to achieve organizational goals. In this paper, based on a field study of 131 large organizations, several issues related to MIS planning have been examined. These issues include: the impact of current MIS services on the overall competitive position of an organization; the impact of future MIS capabilities on the long-term competitive viability of the organization; the factors which prompted organizations to develop an MIS plan; the formal business planning processes used for the MIS function; the areas covered in the MIS plan; the main driving force in undertaking the development of a long-term MIS plan; and, the usefulness of the MIS plan in directing the organizational MIS activites.It has been shown that organizations vary significantly on each of these major MIS planning issues.     

Healthcare information systems: data mining methods in the creation of a clinical recommender system

Recommender systems have been extensively studied to present items, such as movies, music and books that are likely of interest to the user. Researchers have indicated that integrated medical information systems are becoming an essential part of the modern healthcare systems. Such systems have evolved to an integrated enterprise-wide system. In particular, such systems are considered as a type of enterprise information systems or ERP system addressing healthcare industry sector needs. As part of efforts, nursing care plan recommender systems can provide clinical decision support, nursing education, clinical quality control, and serve as a complement to existing practice guidelines. We propose to use correlations among nursing diagnoses, outcomes and interventions to create a recommender system for constructing nursing care plans. In the current study, we used nursing diagnosis data to develop the methodology. Our system utilises a prefix-tree structure common in itemset mining to construct a ranked list of suggested care plan items based on previously-entered items. Unlike common commercial systems, our system makes sequential recommendations based on user interaction, modifying a ranked list of suggested items at each step in care plan construction. We rank items based on traditional association-rule measures such as support and confidence, as well as a novel measure that anticipates which selections might improve the quality of future rankings. Since the multi-step nature of our recommendations presents problems for traditional evaluation measures, we also present a new evaluation method based on average ranking position and use it to test the effectiveness of different recommendation strategies.     

Earnings forecasts in enterprise information systems environment

With the globalisation and integration of world financial markets, the application of enterprise information systems has become more and more popular in the financial service sector. This paper examines the analyst's decision regarding allocation of effort to the precision and timeliness of earnings forecasts with financial decision support systems. Once an analyst decides to follow a firm, the analyst must choose the level of effort to devote to generating outputs, such as earnings forecasts. This paper provides insights into this by examining three issues concerning the forecasts of the individual analyst. First, forecast accuracy and frequency are modelled simultaneously. Then, whether these two effort allocation choices are complements or substitutes is tested. Finally, how competition affects these two characteristics is examined. The accuracy and frequency are examined with simultaneous equations. Results from this analysis suggest that analysts allocate effort among these two forecast criteria in a complementary way. Finally, empirical results reveal a positive association between competition and forecast frequency by the individual analyst. However, a significant association between competition and the individual analyst's forecast accuracy is not found.