University of Warwick
April Examination 2008
FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
SECTION A
Answer ALL questions in this section. Answers to this section should be more direct
than to sections B and C. This section is worth 1/3 of the total examination marks.
Outline answer
a) Intranets may be used for: 1) Internal communication between employees and
between manager and employees. 2) to support internal transactions and business
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IB2420 – FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
processes 3) collaborate and share information. Good answers would expand the
descriptions of these functions and provide some examples.
c) Information Systems are not just technology but also include the formal rules
needed to govern the system and the behavior associated with its use by people. A
good answer would describe a socio-technical approach to study IS in
organisations.
SECTION B
This section has two essay questions from which candidates should choose ONE
question to answer. This section is worth 1/3 of the examination mark.
USE A SEPARATE ANSWER BOOK FOR EACH QUESTION YOU ATTEMPT.
Concise examples may be used to illustrate your answers where appropriate.
State clearly any assumptions that you make.
2
b) Explain one way in which IT may offer competitive advantage to 50%
an organisation
Outline answer
2 b) Some possible answers are: IT may reduce the time to market of a product by
improving the efficiency of the supply chain; IT may also be used to improve
knowledge about the customers of a business and use that information to develop
tailored products and services and also target clients with those products according
to profiles embedded into the system.
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IB2420 – FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Outline answer
Implementing technology such as firewalls, prevents only a small percentage of
threats to the assets of an organisation - mainly those from external sources...
However, the threats from inside the organisations are greater and include employee
intentional and unintentional breaches of security. These threats can only be
prevented by 1) developing security policy and principles; 2) setting up governance
for managing security; 3) training employees on what is good practice; and 4)
creating security awareness programmes. A good answer would further describe
some technical, formal and informal security mechanisms and provide examples.
SECTION C
This section has two essay questions from which candidates should choose ONE
question to answer. This section is worth 1/3 of the examination mark.
USE A SEPARATE ANSWER BOOK FOR EACH QUESTION YOU ATTEMPT.
Concise examples may be used to illustrate your answers where appropriate.
State clearly any assumptions that you make.
Discuss the benefits of improving the speed and quality of decision- 100%
4 making within organizations. How far can IT systems help to achieve
these improvements?
4. Outline answer:
IT systems - should identify range of systems available, from MIS to GDSS etc. - can
help in a no. of areas:
• Automating more routine decisions thus eliminating delay and human error
• Applying previous experience to decisions through expert systems and
databases
• Speeding the flow of information across organizational divisions, e.g.
functional depts., enabling better cross-functional and inter-organizational
collaboration. Good example is supply chain integration.
• Enabling better forecasting scenario planning by better analysis and mining of
data - e.g. consumer trends - and identifying relationships between different
factors.
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IB2420 – FOUNDATIONS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
IT systems less helpful in dealing with human aspects of decision-making:
5 100%
Distinguish between data and information. List and describe three
benefits of implementing Knowledge Management Systems in
organisations. Discuss a limitation of Knowledge Management
Systems as mechanisms to manage knowledge in organisations.
5. Outline answer
END OF PAPER
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