COALESCENCE: The Inevitable Fate of Data Processing

Cascading inventions and innovations in computer and communications technologies, and other technologies in the field of electronics and physics, have spawned numerous devices that represent a coalescence, or merging, of both technological and occupational functions. The one common thread in this process is the data resource, the raw material that these devices collect, process, and communicate. Computers and peripheral equipment permeate eveo’ part of the organization, and communications have shrunk the size of the organization. Even whole industries are going through the technological coalescence process. One result is to force a new look at the meaning of management information system. The MIS manager has the opportuni O, to recognize the changes taking place, and to assume the leadership in managing the firm’s data resources and all that imp6es. To ignore this challenge is to invite the coalescence of the MIS manager into some other data-related organization. KeyworOa: Managing data resources, future rnanagernent information systems. MIS management. Categories: 2.1.2,4, 3.5 *An earlier version of this paper was presented to the GUIDE Convention in San Francisco, May 2, 1977. Yankee ingenuiO, has changed the face of the world and is changing the world of M IS. Innovations and inventions in computer technology, telecommunications, circuitry, and related materials have meshed. Traditional divisions of labor and specialties in the organization are disappearing as the computer becomes a practical and economic tool used in a wide variety of. applications and causes old skills to become obsolete and new ones to emerge. The historical development of these merging technologies is graphically displayed in Figure 1. Amidst this technological uproar, the MIS manager must assess the future in a completely different way than in the past. As computer and communications devices and systems permeate all parts of the organization, even interfacing directly with customers, the problems of planning, budgeting, and controlling these systems are blurred in a mist of organizational confusion. There is only one commOn element that runs through this management maze,~ the data resource, the stuff that computers compute, communication devices communicate, word processors process, and the human resource uses or misuses. It is to the management of data that the manager must turn his attention; the alternative may be to see his influence eroded by other data managers in the organization. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview, a new perspective if you will, of just what is happening to the MIS manager as a result of inventions and innovations that are happening faster than they can be assimilated into the organization. At today’s electric speeds, it is possible for a whole new professionaljqeld to be created, rise to power and become obsolete -within the span of one career lifetime. Is this happening to the MIS profession? Is it possible that the term, management information system, needs redefinition in light of these changes? For the MIS manager with vision, management of all the firm’s data resources may present the ultimate professional challenge.