Information Systems: Escaping the Trap of a Rock and a Hard Place. Creating a single, uniquely identifiable definition for Information Systems or ‘IS’ is a tricky matter. It is a continually-evolving field, relatively new to the world and, to make matters worse, often under-utilised in organisations. You may ask yourself: if Information Systems are this arduous to define, why bother with them at all? To understand this, one need only look to the constituents that make up the field: technology, people, processes and data Ð nothing too incomprehensible there. We are all familiar with these quotidian concepts, and yet companies such as MySpace, Blockbuster, K-Mart, Gamestop, and more grapple with uncertainty or cease to exist due to poor management of some, or all of these four ideas. Information Systems are the combination of these intertwined concepts that form the modern-day organisations that we know.
However, Information Systems do not exist solely within the sphere of the business world. The ubiquity of IS has found use in almost any conceivable situation where there are business processes involved (and ostensibly where there is a regular flow of money). At the extreme, proper implementation of IS can help save lives. Health Information Systems or HIS are used daily in the facilitation of patient care. For example, how patient information is processed, stored, and transferred is vastly different today compared to as little as 20 years ago. Technology in the health industry has progressed infinitely in recent years, and will inexorably continue to do so well into the future. However, if technology in a healthcare institution is innovated over time, but the specialists who use the technology, or the processes that make the technology optimal for use donÕt advance with it, then the benefits of having this technology are dramatically reduced. IS is one way in which we can keep up with this innovation and, essentially, ‘ride the wave’ instead of being toppled by it.
If we were to refer to IT as the proverbial ‘rock’, and business management the ‘hard place’ that a business may find itself in, Information Systems are the clear means of navigating a smooth escape. Of course, the domain of IS is much, much more nuanced than this and incorporates myriad topics that could largely fall under the umbrella of the four concepts I initially mentioned in this article. But, for the purpose of understanding what the concept of Information Systems really is, and taking care in attempting to not frame this through a reductionist lens, this is a good start. IS as a concept certainly has its limitations; from an academic and disciplinary perspective, it lacks a cohesive method and distinctiveness that is so often desired in the scientific community. However, by successfully combining innovative technology, the processes that surround it, the people involved, and the data that flows throughout, businesses will find themselves navigating the business landscape much easier and avoiding the terminal fates that previous antiquated businesses have suffered.
