Textbook for my MIS master's class...not bad, but not appropriate for the class.

Baca buku ini karena buku kuliah. Aku anaknya memang rajin membaca.

For a textbook, I learned a lot. The information and the case studies were relevant to my career and very engaging.

This is a classical introductory textbook on Information Systems now into its 17th edition (2022). This review is about the global edition.

Weighing in at fifteen chapters and over six hundred pages, it is a hefty tome which covers a lot of ground and thus can be compared to, say the Pressman or Sommerville books for Software Engineering. The fifteen chapters are divided into four parts of three to four chapters each:

I. Organizations, management, and the networked enterprise;

II. Information Technology Infrastructure;

III. Key System Applications for the Digital Age, which includes chapters on enterprise applications, e-commerce, knowledge management and the use of artificial intelligence for decision and decision support systems;

IV. Building and Managing Systems.

To understand information systems you have to understand who and what they are providing information for and how they provide it, as well as the quality and timeliness of the information provided. Kenneth and Jane Laudon's textbook is particularly strong on impressively up to date and very illustrative brief one to three page business case studies and examples (called ïnteractive sessions in the text), written by the Laudons and, in the global edition, at least, a number of academic collaborators from around the world, on information system developments and challenges in the US, Singapore, Canada, Middle East, Europe (UK, France, Holland, Germany, Austria, Bulgaria), China, Japan, Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Fiji, Australia, Canada and South Africa as well as the top five technological companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) paying particular attention to global issues throughout the text but particularly in chapter one (Information Systems in Global Systems Today), chapter two (Global E-Business and Collaboration), and chapter fifteen (Managing Global Systems). However, the textbook feels disjointed and does not flow very well perhaps due to the effort of deciding what to keep from previous updates -it is probably time to do a major update on the structure of the textbook itself, although it does do a pretty good job of providing an overview of the broad competency realms identified in the 2020 ACM-AIS Information Systems Curriculum i.e. Foundations, data/information management (including big data and business analytics), technology (including security, enterprise systems, blockchain, IoT), development, and the organizational domain. For example, while there is a chapter on ethical and social issues (chapter 4) and some timid attempts have been made to mention some of the issues in the rest of the book, the attempts definitely fall short, especially on such issues as the impacts of environmental and algorithmic injustice, the UN's sustainable development goals and value sensitive or value oriented design, and at least some of these topics should be given a similar prominence to the one given to globalization. The Laudons also focus almost exclusively on business information systems, barely skimming over other domains of practice such healthcare, government, education and law, although to be honest they very correctly present and analyze particular issues derived from the COVID-19 pandemic in supply chains, health care and education.

Personally I feel more space should have been devoted to business process modeling and IT auditing, and, at least, a mention of ITIL or related service and asset management processes and ISACA standards such as the COBIT framework for IT management and governance, as well as improvements and corrections in the coverage of sociotechnical systems and information systems development methodologies. Also missing are business case studies from Latinamerica and at least one more case study from Africa (there is only one from South Africa). The open data movement is not mentioned and in fact there are excellent case studies of open justice initiatives in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico which could be referenced in order to add key material on open government, open justice in latinamerican case studies.

Each chapter follows a similar pattern. It starts off with a stimulating opening business case to motivate the key topic covered by the chapter, a carefully structured development, of the topic across several sections, emphasizing key points in tables and schemas as well as in the text, a small number of “interactive sessions” which are more in depth but short business cases, and a section titled How will MIS help my career? which provides a representative job offering emphasizing the topic in question, describing the job requirements, possible interview questions and some tips on preparing for such such a job interview. Each chapter ends with a review summary, key terms, review questions, a small number of discussion questions, a proposed hands-on project, a proposed team project which entails looking up and sifting through information int the Internet and preparing a presentation, an additional case study to wrap up the chapter, and bibliographic references for the chapter, most of which are references to journal papers and newspaper articles -it would be nice to clearly point out a handful of recommended further readings from this list to delve more deeply into key topics.

In spite of these caveats, the book is well written, timely and should certainly be taken into account for any foundational or introductory course on Information Systems.

It's a textbook. A decent one, but still unfortunately a textbook.

text for course. Dry, but the interactive sessions were helpful.

Adding another textbook because this one I actually read through properly and while it was for my study and some would argue it doesn't count, I truly think it does in this case because I read all of it.
It was rather easy to read, in some places probably a bit wordy and dragged on, and made reference to a couple of things I felt were irrelevant now like old Mac operating systems and MS-DOS. I think it could have mentioned obsolete things such as these and perhaps not spent so much time on them.
Like I said a bit heavy but did what it intended to do, however at the end I still struggled to see 'the big picture' I think. A summary chapter would have been nice, and an acronyms glossary. The edition I have is the 11th so I'm hoping the 12th will see these suggestions.

Για εισαγωγή στα πληροφοριακά συστήματα είναι άριστο. Ένας φοιτητής πληροφορικής ή οργάνωσης επιχειρήσεων θα γνωρίζει ήδη αρκετό υλικό από αυτό που παρέχεται, το οποίο μπορεί να θεωρηθεί το κύριο αρνητικό (αν το θεωρεί κάποιος αυτό αρνητικό) του παρόντος βιβλίου. Επίσης, πολύ υλικό καλύπτεται επιφανειακά. Ως προς τα θετικά - είναι γλαφυρό, οι συγγραφείς ξέρουν να μεταδίδουν τη πληροφορία, οι περιπτωσιολογικές μελέτες είναι άριστες, και εν γένει η ποιότητα του συγγράμματος είναι απίστευτη. Το προτείνω ανεπιφύλακτα, έστω και με μερικές παραλείψεις σε σελίδες αν η πληροφορία θεωρείται δεδομένη.

Interesting book. Lots of information.

introduction

It was a fairly decent textbook for a topic I knew really not much about before taking my MIS class. The writing style was engaging. But I did find the review questions and the case study questions to be fairly elementary for a master's class. They actually reminded me a lot of sixth-grade level questions. But, the case studies were interesting and practical, and it was interesting to see definitions and examples for things we use or do every day but don't think about.

It was written very clearly and was easy to understand. However, there is a risk that the book might be outdated after some time because the industry has been changing rapidly.