An MIS course integrating information technology and organizational issues

Abstract

Integrating technologies and applications to provide better access to, and sharing of, corporate data and to coordinate enterprise-wide tasks and processes is a critical means to adding business value through information technology. Consequently, potential employers seek information systems professionals whose skills focus on the integration of information technologies, information resources, and business strategy. However, these companies also perceive that universities are not providing graduates the necessary integration skills.This paper describes a course, Business Systems Integration, that addresses the gap between the information systems integration skills that employers desire and those that universities teach. The course approaches information systems integration from three perspectives: 1) integrating information technologies, 2) integrating the content of the MIS curriculum, and 3) integrating organizations via cross-functional business processes. Attaining a practical level of knowledge about systems integration requires a sufficiently complex, real-world environment; thus the course relies on an extensive organizational simulation as the primary pedagogical method. That simulation is described in this paper.