I conducted my first class since the horrific acts of last Tuesday,
yesterday. The class (Management Information Systems) is for graduate
students pursuing a Masters degree in communication and information
studies. Unlike many academics who might choose to bracket out the current
event, package it, and neatly tuck it aside, I chose to draw comparisons
on an organizational and communication level with what happened.
The course should be labeled Organizational Information Systems
because MIS is really one category of information systems which coexists
with others. My course really deals with a primary focus on organizational
and managerial implications of MIS along with some basic understanding of
IT ( not at the computer science level).
However from an IS perspective I take a general view often times
addressing the issue of competitive intelligence and the processing
underlying it as an example of how organizations become aware of and then
react to environmental cues as sources of information. I offered to them ,
if they so choose, as a term paper to relate organization and information
processing as traditionally taught to the organization and information
processing which might occur in terrorist organizations. It would
certainly require some research but limited due to the constraints of one
semester. Coupled with this I will require those who wish to embark in
this direction to speak about the effects of organizational ideology on
both information/communication processing and org. structure.
I really feel that as academics it is important to understand with our
students the relevance of what we teach to the occurrences going on around
us.
I would appreciate any suggestions from list members concerning ideas and
thoughts that you might have in terms of relating present day occurrences
in a critical manner to management and organization courses that many of
us teach.
In learning what makes organizations effective we may come to understand
what makes them ineffective and use that knowledge accordingly. I remember
in Weick's article about the Mann Gulch incident where he analyzed the
breakdown in organization by positing minimal condtions for organization
and then addressing failure in terms of those conditions ( 4 in
number). In my mind I recall that one of those conditions was the ability
to innovate in a bricoleur sense. Using our own planes against us is the
epitomy of innovation. If we can reduce the organizational ability to
innovate then we perhaps can reduce (to a degree) the ability of an
organization to be effective. The antithesis of this feeds right into the
Knowledge Mangement discourse where an environment encouraging
"creative knowledge development" may spur on innovation having a direct
positive effect on organizational success. Yet all this should not be
surprising to us but could be helpful to our students.
Mike Chumer
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