Organisation Management in the Digital Economy

Globalization Challenges

Anna Brzozowska, Dagmara Bubel, Larysa Nekrasenko

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000597134
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

This book highlights the essence of information technology in the modern digital world in relation to improvements and threats to organisations and e-business in the era of the digital economy.

Rapid IT development has created modern business proposals such as digital and virtual currencies, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, mobile banking, online investing and new payment systems. This allows organisations and firms to increase competitiveness by using financial products and services, thus increasing their value. Information technology users receive significant timesaving and a choice of investment options. At the same time, there is a new challenge for regulators who must monitor how this or that technology affects the financial sector.

The authors have collected and systematised information on the models of using information technology in e-business as well as issues of applying information technology in smart organisations and public institutions. The book addresses the issues of risk management in organizations and the problems of personal and social risks resulting from the use of information technology. In addition, the book presents a review of e-commerce sectors and models as well as e-commerce tools, international payment systems and modern money systems. Risks, threats and security rules for using banking services, e-commerce and payment systems are reviewed and systematised.

1 The Nature of Informatics Technology in the Era of Globalisation

DOI: 10.1201/9781003271345-1

1.1 Versatility of Information Technology

Scientific maturity of any discipline is demonstrated by its methodological maturity, which is built of unambiguity and awareness of the nomenclature used.

The issue of key information technology skills, which is pertinent not only to the informatics methodology, requires a detailed consideration, mainly due to its methodological convention. The following terms require clarification: technology, information technology, skills, key skills and information technology skills.

When developing its own conceptual framework, every scientific discipline draws from the colloquial language and terminologies used in interoperable and similar disciplines. In addition to the subject and range of studies, own language is always a measure of development of a scientific discipline and even of its right to exist on its own.

A correctly codified terminological convention of a discipline provides for meeting the requirements of the principle of intersubjective communicability of its terms (Chan et al. 2019, pp. 1–8). The reality described in scientific statements must be independent from the language of those statements – and therefore from any discretion of their interpretation. Uncritical transfer of one discipline’s terminology into another must not be accepted.

Further conditions of terminological correctness are related to the principle of intersubjective verifiability of statements. Their obviousness does not require any interpretation.

The quality of a terminological convention determines its communicability and instructive value of its statements. Only unambiguous terminological conventions can provide for translatability of findings into the language of related theories. Trans-communicability allows verification of the findings and also responds to practical needs through formulating praxeological rules. No such rules can be formulated when a given discipline lacks the necessary and precise conceptual apparatus. In this light, concepts of a given discipline must be accurately explained, clear, explicit and operational. This is why it is necessary to indicate their designata, define the scope of their contents (denotation) and clarify polysemous and synonymous terms.

The matter of key information technology skills requires detailed methodological consideration and definition of the content range. It is therefore necessary to discuss the meaning of concepts such as technology, information technology, skills, key skills and information technology skills. It should also be highlighted that each of the aforementioned concepts is polysemous and represents a node of a conceptual framework.

The issue of key information technology skills requires refining due to the terminological convention of each separate concept and the double-category concepts, i.e. key skills and information technology. Not only do the growing information civilisation and efforts to build information society imply the need to deal with these issues, but they also demonstrate the vast extent of the subject.

However, the following terms must be explained first (Arana-Solares et al. 2019, pp. 81–95):

• technology
• information technology
• skills
• key skills
• information technology skills

The concept “technology” can be used within a narrow meaning with respect to a specific phenomenon, e.g. the information acquisition technology. “Technology” can be understood broadly and referred to the definition of a scientific discipline. If various technologies are considered in line with the state of the art of contemporary technical sciences, as scientific disciplines, then they should meet the necessary methodological requirements. They should also realise the tasks arising from the methodological functions of scientific studies (Gräfrath, Huber, Uhlemann 2020).

In the Polish terminological convention, the concept of technology is too often regarded as synonymous to the praxeological understanding of the concept of technique (in its functional meaning). In classical terms, the concept of technology meant an applied science that concerned the processes of production of products from raw materials. Indeed, every human production activity is accompanied by the following three basic questions: What? What from? How?

The first question is answered by defining the subject of production, or the primary objective of the technology concerned, and by naming the creation (product) or any other deliverable. Therefore, in most general terms, there are technologies which lead to tangible products, transformed energy, or transformed (processed) information (Aasheim, Lixin, Williams 2019, p. 10).

The answer to the second question (what from?) categorises technologies by the raw material subjected to technological processing. Effects of these technologies are effects of production, extraction, storage, processing, transfer, carriage, transmission. The raw material from which these effects will be produced can be matter (either animate or inanimate), energy (which cannot be only produced), information. Notably, each of these raw materials can have a different appearance, or input form, which in turn will affect the structure of the related “treatment” processes.

The third question (how?) is regarding ways (methods), forms of their organisation and technical means which serve the purpose of technological processing. The answer to that question includes the answer to the question of how something is processed (and sometimes produced), stored, transmitted and used. It should be added, however, that it is not about a one-off phenomenon but a method which is conscious, systematically repeated, unambiguous and sufficiently precise. This is how such a technology is characterised in qualitative and praxeological terms (Ullah, Sepasgozar 2019, pp. 469–484).

The developing, widely understood informatics, implies the need to perceive various phenomena differently. The systemic, total and global nature of informatics phenomena puts researchers in a situation that is new to them; hence, the concepts must be reinterpreted.

Taking the above references to informatics phenomena, the concept of technology must include two groups of phenomena (Berdowska, Mikuláš 2020, pp. 126–147):

• all technical actions related to methods of designing, constructing and producing technical means of informatics. For the purpose of standardisation of the terminological convention, all these technologies will be referred to as informatics technologies;
• all methods and means of “treatment” (processing) of information, including inter alia searching for, gathering, recording, storing, processing, transmitting and erasing information. These technologies will be referred to as information technologies. Notably, they form whole families of technologies – there are different information processing needs and processes (including methods and technical means) employed by them. Indeed, in every sphere of activity, e.g. storage of information, various technologies can be identified and used for data compression (depending on the type of data) and recording on different media – therefore involving different technologies and technical means of their application.

In reference to the above questions (what, what from, how), it can be said that information technologies take usable processing, storage, transmission, or erasure of any type of information (data) as their primary objective.

Today, the concept of information (what from?) is also significantly broader. Forms in which it appears are not neutral to the processes of information processing, i.e. specific technologies. Each of them represents a separate information technology and therefore requires application of a specific technological process (organisation and means of informatics technique). It also requires persons involved to have appropriate skills.

It can also be recognised that the concept of information technologies is significantly expanding at present as the methods and technical means expand and the information processing needs change. The view that there is one universal information technology is therefore not legitimate. The interpretation provided here implies that information technologies include entire sets of detailed technologies.

Information technologies serve versatile search, gathering, utilisation, processing, storage and transmission of various types of information. This versatility applies to sources, range, purposes and ways of utilisation of information through various technical means and their systems.

The term “information technology” (IT) refers to a bundle of industries related with informatics technologies. Therefore, IT covers production of hardware, production of software, hardware and software consultancy, data processing and database creation, software and hardware sales and maintenance as well as education in informatics technologies. They are high-technology industries which currently determine the efficiency of nearly all traditional branches of economy. They support both small and medium organisations of various fields as well as the financial sector, public administration, transport, power engineering, telecommunications, pharmacy, scientific institutions, food industry, retail chains and petrol stations and many other institutional and private customers.

Information technology is defined as a combination of informatics proper with well-established communications techniques – teleinformatics and telematics (Osterhage 2018, pp. 139–151). This definition, albeit very general, shows characteristic relations which are constantly developed and refined within this area of science.

Even before informatics tools and means are introduced on a mass scale, Marz Oliver writes that the term refers to a structured set of methods, means and latest targeted actions oriented to realisation of all information processes in the society (Marz et al. 2019, pp. 7–1).

Mammes Ingelore defines information technology as all methods and tools for information processing, including methods of searching, selecting, gathering, recording, storing, processing, transmitting and erasing information. The author also writes that information technology represents all technical actions related to methods of designing architecture and producing technical means of informatics (Mammes et al. 2019, pp. 93–109).

UNESCO documents include three definitions of information technology (Biehl 2020, pp. 3–23) – they are shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Three definitions of information technology provided in UNESCO documents. Source: Own work based on: Biehl 2020, pp. 3–23.

Information technology can be defined also as a set of modern devices used in the process of communication. It is generally agreed that the capabilities of information technology can be characterised by the skills of effective use of means, tools and sources of information for analysing, processing and presenting information as well as modelling, measuring and controlling devices and events.

In organisations, information technologies have two main functions: services and innovation. The service function allows organisations to pursue their strategies in a more effective manner. The innovation function provides organisations with new growth opportunities which would not be available without IT. Both these functions have a profound impact on the level of the rate of return on capital invested in an organisation and on its ability to grow. This, in turn, translates into future financial flows, which determine the value of the organisation.

Information technologies (IT) play an important role in organisations with state-of-the-art management, penetrating into virtually every aspect of their operations. They have a tremendous impact on the manner in which modern organisations are managed. Thanks to deployment of state-of-the-art information technologies, organisations are modernised and improve on earlier management methods, thus contributing to the development of their innovation and competitive edge on the global market.

Information technologies cover not only various forms of information itself but also informatics equipment and knowledge as well as telecommunication. At present, the concept also covers those technologies that have emerged from the combination of informatics with communication techniques (information and communication technologies). In order to differentiate between them, it is proposed to use the concept of telematics to mark the process of inclusion of telecommunication technologies into the needs of information technologies and vice versa. This field of science and technology is believed to combine the achievements of informatics and telecommunications, which...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Authors
• Introduction
• 1 The Nature of Informatics Technology in the Era of Globalisation
• 2 Information as a Database in an Organisation
• 3 Determinants Related to Threats in Information and Informatics Systems
• 4 How Information Technology Is Changing E-business on the Way to the Digital Economy
• Summary
• References
• Index