Ebook Management information systems (10e): Part 1

Ebook Management information systems (10e): Part 1 presents the following content: Chapter 1: Foundations of information systems in business, Chapter 2: Competing with information technology, Chapter 3: Computer hardware, Chapter 4: Computer software, Chapter 5: Data resource management, Chapter 6: Telecommunications and networks. 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obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page i 8/25/10 2:00 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below This page intentionally left blank obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page iii 8/25/10 2:00 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS Tenth Edition James A O’Brien College of Business Administration Northern Arizona University George M Marakas KU School of Business University of Kansas obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page iv 01/10/10 11:01 AM user-f494 /208/MHBR180/obr76817_disk1of1/0073376817/obr76817_pagefiles Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below Published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10020 Copyright © 2011, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002, 1999, 1996, 1993, 1990 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside the United States This book is printed on acid-free paper DOW/DOW 10 ISBN 978-0-07-337681-3 MHID 0-07-337681-7 Vice president and editor-in-chief: Brent Gordon Editorial director: Paul Ducham Director of development: Ann Torbert Senior development editor: Trina Hauger Vice president and director of marketing: Robin J Zwettler Marketing manager: Sarah Schuessler Vice president of editing, design and production: Sesha Bolisetty Senior project manager: Bruce Gin Buyer II: Debra R Sylvester Senior designer: Mary Kazak Sander Senior photo research coordinator: Jeremy Cheshareck Photo researcher: Poyee Oster Media project manager: Cathy L Tepper Cover design: Gino Cieslik Interior design: Maciej Frolow / Brand X Pictures Typeface: 10/12 Janson Compositor: Aptara®, Inc Printer: R R Donnelley Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data O’Brien, James A., 1936–2007 Management information systems / James A O’Brien, George M Marakas.—10th ed p cm Includes Index Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN-13: 978-0-07-337681-3 (alk paper) ISBN-10: 0-07-337681-7 (alk paper) Management information systems I Marakas, George M II Title T58.6.O26 2011 658.4⬘038011—dc22 2010027295 www.mhhe.com obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page v 8/25/10 2:00 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below Dedicated to our families and our friends You make everything possible The world of information systems presents new and exciting challenges each and every day Creating a textbook to capture this world is a formidable task, to be sure This, the 10th edition of Management Information Systems, represents the best we have to offer We take pride in delivering this new edition to you, and we thank all of you for your loyalty to the book and the input you provided that was instrumental in its development Your continued support fills us with joy and a sense of both accomplishment and contribution We are also pleased and excited to welcome a new member to our writing family Miguel Aguirre-Urreta has joined us in the creation of the materials contained herein His work and effort on the Real World Cases and blue boxes will be apparent as we bring you new cases in every chapter of the book Please join us in welcoming Miguel to our family On behalf of Jim, Miguel, and myself, please accept our sincere appreciation for your support and loyalty As always, we hope you enjoy and benefit from this book obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page xi 8/25/10 2:01 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung Real Life Lessons from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below Use Your Brain Traditional case study questions promote and provide opportunity for critical thinking and classroom discussion obr76817_ch03_076-128.indd Page 80 7/24/10 1:00 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin 80 ● Module II / Information Technologies that the complexity can be conquered, while protecting or improving IT’s service levels By creating a standard desktop configuration and consistent management processes, Hercules reduced total cost of ownership to $76 per month per desktop, from more than $240 In 2004, with the CEO’s support, Alistair Jacques, then SVP of UHG-IT, launched Hercules, focusing it on standardizing and streamlining the processes behind desktop management: procurement, configuration, installation, life cycle, and asset management In addition to this focus on process, two techniques stand out as key to the program’s success Working with finance, IT developed a chargeback model that imposes a premium on nonstandardized desktop configurations: $170 per month versus $45 per month for a standard configuration This value price encourages business managers to choose the more efficient infrastructure UHG also reduced costly on-site support by reorganizing it: A central IT team manages high-level support activities, completing 95 percent remotely, while select, on-site end users (often non-IT administrative staff trained by IT) provide basic support to colleagues UHG-IT treated desktop management as a business process challenge rather than a technology issue This approach freed them to use tactics like non-IT staff for desktop support and value pricing To date, UHG has converted 75,000 out of 90,000 devices to the new standards, delivering $42 million in annual savings UHG can now manage nearly four times the number of end users with the same number of IT personnel as in 2004, all while actually improving—not diminishing—service levels IT now deploys 99.4 percent of releases, updates, and patches in three hours, instead of 65 percent in three weeks Indeed, companies that blow off asset management so at their own peril At the same time, 99 percent of companies that her organization comes across don’t have a proper asset management process in place, according to Elisabeth Vanderveldt, vice president of business development at Montreal-based IT services and consulting firm Conamex International Software Corp That’s a staggering number, considering the value that life-cycle management can bring to an organization And it’s CASE STUDY QUESTIONS indicative of the widespread lack of respect for this important aspect of IT operations The ideal time to start considering an asset management program is before the business and its IT infrastructure is even up and running, but the common scenario is that corporations look to asset management after they’ve encountered a problem running the infrastructure Businesses’ mentality about asset management is evolving, however Companies used to consider only reliability, availability, and overall equipment effectiveness in the equation But now, he said, there is recognition of factors like continuing pressures on cost and green technology “It really requires a mature organization to understand what’s going to be needed to assess and execute a life-cycle management strategy,” says Don Barry, associate partner in global business services in the supply chain operations and asset management solutions at IBM Why is a life-cycle management program important? For one thing, it puts IT in much better control of its assets, and this can have a number of benefits “IT can make really intelligent decisions around what they should get rid of, and they might even find they have more money in the budget and they can start taking a look at newer technology and see if they can bring it in-house Without that big picture, they just end up spending more and more money than had they been proactive,” says Vanderveldt Life-cycle management also has value as a risk management tool, and it aids in the disaster recovery process as well, she adds “It’s also beneficial for those moments that are just completely out of your control, like mergers acquisitions and uncontrolled corporate growth, either organic or inorganic,” says Darin Stahl, an analyst at London, Ontario based Info-Tech Research Group “IT leaders without this tool set are now charged with pulling all this information together on short notice That could be diminished considerably in terms of turnaround time and effort for IT guys if they have a holistic asset management program in place.” The Real World Activities section offers possibilities for hands-on exploration and learning Source: Adapted from Bob Evans, “Global CIO Quick Takes: AstraZeneca Saves Millions with BDNA,” InformationWeek, February 22, 2010; Rick Swanborg, “ Desktop Management: How UnitedHealth Used Standardization to Cut Costs,” CIO.com, April 28, 2009; and Kathleen Lau, “Asset Management: Do You Know What You’ve Got?,” CIO Canada, August 13, 2008 REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES What are the business benefits of implementing strong IT asset management programs? In what ways have the companies discussed in the case benefited? Provide several examples An important metric in this area considered by companies is the Total Cost of Ownership ( TCO) of their IT assets Go online and research what TCO is and how it is related to IT asset management How are companies using TCO to manage their IT investments? Prepare a presentation to share your research with the rest of your class One of the companies in the case, UnitedHealth Group, tackled the issue by imposing standardization and “charging” those stepping outside standard models How should they balance the need to standardize with being able to provide business units with the technologies best suited to their specific needs? Justify your answer What does Don Barry of IBM mean by “life-cycle” in the context of this case? How would this life-cycle management work when it comes to IT assets? Break into small groups with your classmates and create a working definition of life-cycle management and how it works as you understand it from the case What are the companies mentioned in the case trying to control, or manage, through these projects? What is the problem? And how did they get there? Use Your Hands xi obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page xii 8/25/10 2:01 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung Strategy, Ethics from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below Competitive Advantage Chapter focuses on the use of IT as a way to surpass your competitor’s performance obr76817_ch02_045-075.indd Page 45 7/24/10 1:04 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Management Challenges CHAPTER Business Applications Module I Development Processes COMPETING WITH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY obr76817_ch02_045-075.indd Page 46 7/24/10 1:04 PM user-f498 46 ● /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Module I / Foundation Concepts SECTION I Strategic IT Information Technologies Foundation Concepts C h ap t e r H i g h l i g h t s L e ar n i n g O bj ec ti v es Section I Fundamentals of Strategic Advantage Identify several basic competitive strategies and explain how they use information technologies to confront the competitive forces faced by a business Identify several strategic uses of Internet technologies and give examples of how they can help a business gain competitive advantages Give examples of how business process reengineering frequently involves the strategic use of Internet technologies Identify the business value of using Internet technologies to become an agile competitor or form a virtual company Explain how knowledge management systems can help a business gain strategic advantages Fundam e ntals of StrStrategic ateITgic Competitive Strategy Concepts Advantage Real World Case: How to Win Friends and Influence Business People: Quantify IT Risks and Value Technology is no longer an afterthought in forming businessUses strategy, but the actual cause Strategic of Information Technology and driver Building a Customer-Focused Business The Value Chain and Strategic IS This chapter will show you that it is important to view information systems as more than a set of technologies that support efficient business operations, workgroup Section II and enterprise collaboration, or effective businessUsing decision making Information techInformation Technology for Strategic nology can change the way businesses compete You should also view information Advantage systems strategically, that is, as vital competitive networks, Strategic Usesas of aITmeans of organizational renewal, and as a necessary investment in Reengineering technologies; Business such technologies help Processes a company adopt strategies and business processes that enable it to reengineer or reinReal World Case: For Companies Both Big and Small: vent itself to survive and succeed in today’s dynamic business environment Running a Business on Smartphones Section I of this chapter introduces fundamental competitive strategy concepts that Becoming an Agile Company underlie the strategic use of information systems Section II then discusses several maCreating a Virtual Company jor strategic applications of information technology used by many companies today Building a Knowledge-Creating Company Read the Real World Case regarding how to quantify the risks (and value) of Real World Wachoviato and Others: obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 529 Trading 7/24/10 1:08 PM user-f498 investing in IT We can learn a lot about how IT can bestCase: be managed provide Securities at the Speed of Light superior returns on investment from this case See Figure 2.1 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Real World Case: IT Leaders: Reinventing IT as a Strategic Business Partner Competitive Strategy Concepts In Chapter 1, we emphasized that a major role of information systems applications in business is to provide effective support of a company’s strategies for gaining competitive advantage This strategic role of information systems involves using information technology to develop products, services, and capabilities that give a company major advantages over the competitive forces it faces in the global marketplace This role is accomplished through a strategic information architecture: the collec- 45 Ethics & Security Chapter 13 discusses the issues surrounding these topics and the challenges IT faces obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 529 7/24/10 1:08 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Chapter 13 / Security and Ethical Challenges REAL WORLD CASE T Se c u ri t y, E t h i c al , an d Soc i e t al Ch al l e n g e s of IT Introduction of their business systems Now let’s look at a real-world example Read the Real World Case on the next page We can learn a lot from this case about the security and ethical issues that result from the pervasive use of IT in organizations and society today See Figure 13.1 Business/IT Security, Ethics, and Society xii 529 Texas Health Resources and Intel: Ethics, IT, and Compliance he IT staff at Texas Health Resources Inc must deliver more than technical functionality And it needs to deliver more than the business requirements: It also has to meet the organization’s ethical standards To that end, its systems must help ensure that Texas obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 528 7/24/10 1:08 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Health complies with laws and regulations And they also have to promote the right behaviors and F I G U Rones, E 1says Michael Alverson, vice prevent or flag undesirable president and deputy CIO at the Arlington-based nonprofit health care system Consider the challenge of handling patients’ medical records Even though the federal Health 528 ● Module V / Management Challenges Insurance Portability and Accountability Act mandates that agencies keep those records private, caregivers still need to access them—when appropriate So the organization’s electronic health records system “gives doctors and nurses who are caring directly for patients quick access when they use the right authentication,” Alverson says But additional authentication is required to get records for patients who aren’t under the provider’s immediate care The records who gets access to what, allowing officials to There is no question that the use of information technology in businesssystem presents major audit review cases to ensure there’s no inappropriate access security challenges, poses serious ethical questions, and affects society inand significant “The IT staff holds itself to similar ethical standards, too,” ways Therefore, in this section, we explore the threats to businesses and individuals as Alverson says The department has policies that prohibit taking a result of many types of computer crime and unethical behavior In Section II,endorsing we will vendors, to help guarantee that workers gifts and examine a variety of methods that companies use to manage the security and integrity decisions based only on quality and needs make procurement SECTION I ● And when there’s any question—such as when a vendor proposes a deep discount if Texas Health agrees to be an early adopter of new technology—IT leaders can turn to the systemwide Business and Ethics Council for guidance “If we really want everyone to subscribe to the idea that working at Texas Health is special, then we have to have peo“The decisions ple actively believe in doing the right thing,” Alverson says were easier in ics were favorable, Companies are increasingly looking at their ethics poli-but the choic cies and articulating specific valuesited that address rangeformer of now,” asays CIO Jo issues, from community commitment to environmental susconsultancy JG Stevenson Associ tainability, which employees can use to guide their work you to versus how mu The need to comply with federal laws andafford regulations drives some of this, while consumer expectations, demandsStevenson say don’temployee get burned.” and economic pressures also play a part toward certain ethical goals be Information technology consultant Dena L Smith lays those goals out a hypothetical dilemma: Should whether an IT department hire a involved gre g more expensive vendor because thesponsibility vendor sharesprograms—aren’t its own company’s ethics standards, or should it gohaven’t with a lower-cost they done that yet, it ge provider that doesn’t? spend more money than we have Companies with established ethical standards that guide “Companies use the term how they conduct business frequently confront this kind of question, Smith says, but it’s a particularly tough question many different things In many today, given the recession With ITjority, departments forced to it means compliance with cut budgets and staff, CIOs will find it difficult to allocate In other organizatio dollars for applications that promotestandards corporate ethics of corporate valu “The decisions were easier in thedefining days when a theset econom The use of information technologies in business has had a major impact on society and thus raises ethical issues in the areas of crime, privacy, individuality, employment, health, and working conditions See Figure 13.2 It is important to understand that information technology has had beneficial results, as well as detrimental effects, on society and people in each of these areas For example, computerizing a manufacturing process may have the beneficial result of improving working conditions and producing products of higher quality at lower cost, The pervasive use of information technology in but it also has the adverse effect of eliminating people’s jobs So your job as a manager organizations and society presents individuals with or business professional should involve managing your work activities and those of new ethical challenges and dilemmas others to minimize the detrimental effects of business applications of information technology and optimize their beneficial effects That would represent an ethically responsible use of information technology Source: © Punchstock they go about business,” says Ki Hanson, executive director Applied Ethics at Santa Clara U Either way, CIOs have an technology can further their com “Policy decisions at the very tivity that IT experts can bring “CIOs will know the capabilitie tribute that to corporate strateg misuses of those capabilities an prevent the organization from s Hanson cites a 15-year-ol workers at a large telephone com to develop a list of customers w obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page xiii 8/25/10 2:01 PM F-497 obr76817_ch14_579-620.indd Page 599 7/24/10 1:11 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung and Beyond from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky obr76817_ch14_579-620.indd Page 598 7/24/10 1:10 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below Go Global with IT 598 ● Module V / Management Challenges SECTION II The International Dimension M anag i ng Gl ob al IT This text closes with Chapter 14, an in-depth look at IT across borders Whether they are in Berlin or Bombay, Kuala Lumpur or Kansas, San Francisco or Seoul, companies around the globe are developing new models to operate competitively in a digital economy These models are structured, yet agile; global, yet local; and they concentrate on maximizing the risk-adjusted return from both knowledge and technology assets International dimensions have become a vital part of managing a business enterprise in the inter-networked global economies and markets of today Whether you become a manager in a large corporation or the owner of a small business, you will be affected by international business developments and deal in some way with people, products, or services whose origin is not your home country Read the Real World Case on the next page We can learn a lot about the challenges facing senior IT executives who operate in a globalized world See Figure 14.11 It s an extreme example, but supporting business in d oping regions rarely lends itself to cookie-cutter IT Mor the importance of emerging markets today means IT le can’t fob off secondhand technology to non-Western loca Figure 14.12 illustrates the major dimensions of the job of managing global informa“The strategy of many corporations was basically t tion technology that we cover in this section Notice that all global IT activities must velop things in major markets then hand down those be adjusted to take into account the cultural, political, and geoeconomic challenges that exist in the international business community Developing appropriate business tions to the emerging markets,” Shurts says “Hey, this l and IT strategies for the global marketplace should be the first step in global informais two years old, maybe we pass that down, too.” tion technology management Once that is done, end users and IS managers can move That’s not the case at Cadbury, explains Shurts “I on to developing the portfolio of business applications needed to support business/IT to deliver strategies that address the specific needs of em strategies; the hardware, software, and Internet-based technology platforms to suping markets It requires some creativity and new thinki port those applications; the data resource management methods to provide necessary Understanding your company’s business model fo databases; and finally the systems development projects that will produce the global veloping markets is critical “Will there be manufactu information systems required obr76817_ch11_446-480.indd Page 452 7/24/10 1:13 PM user-f498 Will you distribute from this market? How will your force engage customers and what is their role whil gaged?” says Ed Holmes, vice president of Global IT 1:15 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Stiefel, an $812 million dollar skin care company, acq We seem to have reached a point where virtually every CIO is a global CIO—a by GlaxoSmithKline, that operates in 28 countries leader whose sphere of influence (and headaches) spans continents The global CIO’s most common challenge, according to CIO Executive Council members, is managYou may end up providing technology and services ing global virtual teams In an ideal world, HR policies across the global IT team lar to those you supply in established markets, Holmes Emerging economies are increasingly demanding— should be consistent, fair, and responsive Titles and reporting structures (if not and getting—IT executives’ attention “but you must challenge the baseline assumptions in compensation) should be equalized to ensure that your solution will fit the market both The council’s European members, representing Royal Dutch Shell, Galderma, nomically and culturally.” F I GU R E 14.11 Global IT Management obr76817_ch11_446-480.indd Page 467 7/24/10 Global Teams: It’s Still a Small World Olympus, and others, commissioned a globalization playbook that collects and codifies best practices in this and other globalization challenges Obtain local HR expertise Companies must have a local HR person in each country to deal with local laws “Hiring, firing, and training obligations must be managed very differently in each location, and you need someone with local expertise on the laws and processes,” says Michael Pilkington, former chief information officer of Euroclear, the Brussels-based provider of domestic and cross-border settlement for bond, equity, and fund transactions Create job grade consistency across regions Euroclear is moving toward a job evaluation methodology that organizes job types into vertical categories, such as managing people/process, product development, business support, and project management This provides a basis for comparing and managing roles and people across locations Grade level is not the same thing as a title; people’s titles are much more subject to local conventions /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Source: © Getty Images obr76817_ch11_446-480.indd Page 454 7/24/10 1:13 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Expand Your Knowledge Blue boxes in each chapter provide brief, in-depth examples of how corporations apply IS concepts and theories Risk Assessment and Mitigation CIOs are frequently asked, “What are our IT risks?” Unfortunately, this question is /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin too generic because there are multiple kinds of risk Before starting any risk assessment, IT needs to understand both the concern prompting the request and which risks need to be assessed Moreover, everyone needs to understand that nearly all risks that affect an IT organization affect the entire business Risks fall into four categories that require different mitigation tools: Business operations risk An assessment determines the risks involved in addressing or ignoring a particular competitive threat Analyzing competitive threats helps the company decide whether to invest the resources necessary to combat the threat Determining appropriate responses to competitive threats from nontraditional sources can be particularly difficult The appropriate mitigation tool is a good business case that evaluates all associated risks For new business opportunities, a thorough risk assessment may be as important to success as accurate financial projections Program risk For approved or existing programs, management concerns focus on whether the program or project will be delivered on time, within budget, and with quality Effective projectLtd management andmarket regular monitoring mitigate risk Bristow Helicopters started losing share in the 1990s, executives Bristow Helicopters: highWhen Business interruption Thisacross type of affects the company’s ability to moved to improve businessrisk processes therisk Redhill, England-based company Technologycontinue operating under difficult Scenarios run the efficiencies gamut from a “We needed to change facilities andcircumstances maintenance processes, improve Supported SWOT, failed of server the staff, the building interface between sales and clients,” sayscauses John minor Cloggie, to aimprove destroyed In most cases, a failed server probdirector at the unit building of Houston-based Bristow Group opand Much More lemstechnical for certain people InEuropean contrast, business a destroyed can bring all company Inc., which provides helicopter services to the oil andthat gas industry erations to a halt A continuity-of-operations plan describes how the business A key goal of this reengineering effort was tomitigates cut severalrisk million dollars from the will function in the event of various difficulties operating budget of Bristow Helicopters The company managed the project using Market risk This category is divided into geopolitical and industry-specific risks MindGenius, “mind-mapping” software from East Kilbride, Scotland-based Gael Geopolitical risks include war, terrorism, and epidemics, as well as nationalization and Ltd The product enabled it to conduct a SWOT analysis (an assessment of its import restrictions These risks vary and depending theout country, the comreengiplexity of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), on carve various process the neering corporate supply and the to importance the industry to political leadership tasks, and chain, delegate them appropriateofgroups Each team then took the Industry-specific risksofalso planning risk by developing responses high-level version thevary map Scenario and created its ownmitigates subcategories, tasks, and deadlines obr76817_ch11_446-480.indd Page 461 7/24/10 1:13 PM user-f498 Société de Transport de Montréal: Smooth Ride after a Bumpy Start Suburban sprawl might make a great business case for a transit agency, but when it came to servers, Canada’s Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) drew the line Mike Stefanakis, senior systems engineer at STM, says that the main reason he started looking at virtualization technology was to prevent server sprawl He wanted consolidation, particularly for development servers at the agency, which provides more than 360 million bus and metro rides each year “We crunched the numbers and realized that our growth was going to cause a few problems in the near future,” he says If things kept going as they had, the agency would need an additional 20 to 30 servers each year, on top of its existing base of 180 primarily Wintel machines “Too many servers were going to be needed to feed the needs of our users and clients,” Stefanakis says But even though staffers were convinced of virtualization’s benefits pretty early on, the agency’s end users didn’t necessarily feel the same way Several factors contributed to the initial resistance For starters, there was a fear of the unknown There were e-Business Strategy Examples Expand Your Horizons Globe icons indicate examples with an international focus so that your knowledge makes you truly worldly for its designated work segment Since beginning the project in 2004, says Cloggie, the company has managed to cut $6 million from its operating budget “Mind mapping, of course, didn’t directly create our $6 million savings, but it did allow us to control the project while it was being delivered,” he says “The speed Market creator Use Internet define knowledge a new market by identifying with which you can mapthe processes andtocapture is a huge return.” a unique customer need This model requires you to be among the first to market and to remain ahead of competition by continuously innovating Examples: Amazon.com and E*TRADE Channel reconfiguration Use the Internet as a new channel to access customers, make sales, and fulfill orders directly This model supplements, rather than replaces, physical distribution and marketing channels Example: Cisco and Dell Transaction intermediary Use the Internet to process purchases This transactional model includes the end-to-end process of searching, comparing, selecting, and paying online Examples: Microsoft Expedia and eBay Infomediary Use the Internet to reduce the search cost Offer the customer a unified process for collecting information necessary to make a large purchase Examples: HomeAdvisor and Auto-By-Tel Self-service innovator Use the Internet to provide a comprehensive suite of services that the customer’s employees can use directly Self-service affords employees a direct, personalized relationship Examples: Employease and Healtheon Supply chain innovator Use the Internet to streamline the interactions among all parties in the supply chain to improve operating efficiency Examples: McKesson and Ingram Micro Channel mastery Use the Internet as a sales and service channel This model supplements, rather than replaces, the existing physical business offices and call centers Example: Charles Schwab xiii obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page xiv 8/25/10 2:01 PM F-497 /Users/F-497/Desktop/Tempwork/AUGUST 2010/18:08:10/FREE036:Volhart:VYN Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung What’s New? from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below The Tenth Edition includes significant changes to the Ninth Edition’s content that update and improve its coverage, many of them suggested by an extensive faculty review process Highlights of key changes for this edition include the following: • Real World Cases provide current, relevant, and in-depth examples of IS theory • • • • • • • • • • • • • • xiv applications A combination of Case Study Questions and Real World Activities allows you to engage students on a variety of levels More new Real World Cases: More than two-thirds of the cases are new to the Tenth Edition These up-to-date cases provide students with in-depth business examples of the successes and challenges that companies are experiencing in implementing the information technology concepts covered in each chapter Chapter 1: Foundations of Information Systems in Business provides an expanded discussion of IS careers and the job market outlook Chapter 2: Competing with Information Technology has added coverage of the strategic uses of IS/IT Chapter 3: Computer Hardware provides an expanded history of computing section and updated coverage of the iPhone Chapter 4: Computer Software includes two brand-new sections that cover cloud computing and application virtualization It also includes added coverage of Windows Server 2008 and an updated Java discussion to reflect the most recent version, Java EE Chapter 5: Data Resource Management expands the discussions of Facebook, YouTube, and strategic data management Chapter 6: Telecommunications and Networks updates the discussions of Internet2, the number of Internet users, and metropolitan area networks Chapter 7: e-Business Systems includes a new discussion on the relationship between SCM, CRM, and ERP with regard to supporting corporate strategy There is also an expanded discussion of SCM as a top strategic objective of modern enterprises and a new discussion of the use of digital billboards in targeted marketing Chapter 9: e-Commerce Systems provides a new section and discussion of search engine optimization, new data relating to top retail web sites and online sales volume, and increased coverage and discussion of e-commerce success factors Chapter 10: Decision Support Systems includes an additional discussion with regard to the strategic value of business intelligence activities in the modern organization Chapter 11: Developing Business/IT Strategies has added coverage of system implementation challenges, user resistance, end-user development, and logical versus physical models Chapter 12: Developing Business/IT Solutions has increased coverage of system implementation challenges, user resistance, and end-user development Chapter 13: Security and Ethical Challenges includes a new section on cyberterrorism Additionally, it provides updated coverage of software piracy economic impacts, increased coverage of HIPAA, and a significant increase in discussion of current state of cyber law Chapter 14: Enterprise and Global Management of Information Technology provides expanded in-depth coverage of COBIT and IT governance structures in organizations, as well as an added section on trends in outsourcing and offshoring obr76817_fm_i-xxxiv_1.indd Page xv 8/25/10 9:24 PM user-f494 /Volumes/207/MHSF190/keL319951_disk1of1/pagefiles Chapter About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcen- dent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T J Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the sol- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 27 emn dumping ground The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan’s mistress The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car ‘We’re getting off!’ he insisted ‘I want you to meet my girl.’ I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road un- der Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night 28 The Great Gatsby restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs GEORGE B WILSON Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car vis- ible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste He was a blonde, spiritless man, anae- mic, and faintly handsome When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes ‘Hello, Wilson, old man,’ said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder ‘How’s business?’ ‘I can’t complain,’ answered Wilson unconvincingly ‘When are you going to sell me that car?’ ‘Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.’ ‘Works pretty slow, don’t he?’ ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Tom coldly ‘And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.’ ‘I don’t mean that,’ explained Wilson quickly ‘I just meant——‘ His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a mo- ment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 29 but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: ‘Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.’ ‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom ‘I want to see you,’ said Tom intently ‘Get on the next train.’ ‘All right.’ ‘I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.’ She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door We waited for her down the road and out of sight It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the rail- road track ‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg ‘Awful.’ ‘It does her good to get away.’ ‘Doesn’t her husband object?’ ‘Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New 30 The Great Gatsby York He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.’ So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up togeth- er to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs Wilson sat discreetly in another car Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train She had changed her dress to a brown figured mus- lin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York At the news-stand she bought a copy of ‘Town Tattle’ and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume Upstairs, in the solemn echo- ing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glow- ing sunshine But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass ‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly ‘I want to get one for the apartment They’re nice to have—a dog.’ We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd re- semblance to John D Rockefeller In a basket, swung Student Support from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an inde- terminate breed ‘What kind are they?’ asked Mrs Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window ‘All kinds What kind you want, lady?’ ‘I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t suppose you got that kind?’ Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 31 The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck ‘That’s no police dog,’ said Tom ‘No, it’s not exactly a polICE dog,’ said the man with disappointment in his voice ‘It’s more of an airedale.’ He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back ‘Look at that coat Some coat That’s a dog that’ll never bother you with catching cold.’ ‘I think it’s cute,’ said Mrs Wilson enthusiastically ‘How much is it?’ ‘That dog?’ He looked at it admiringly ‘That dog will cost you ten dollars.’ The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale con- cerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked delicately ‘That dog? That dog’s a boy.’ ‘It’s a bitch,’ said Tom decisively ‘Here’s your money Go and buy ten more dogs with it.’ We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 571 7/24/10 1:17 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin great flock of white sheep turn the corner ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I have to leave you here.’ ‘No, you don’t,’ interposed Tom quickly ‘Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment Won’t you, Myrtle?’ 32 The Great Gatsby ‘Come on,’ she urged ‘I’ll telephone my sister Cathe- rine She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.’ ‘Well, I’d like to, but——‘ We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs Wil- son gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in ‘I’m going to have the McKees come up,’ she announced as we rose in the elevator ‘And of course I got to call up my sister, too.’ The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tap- estried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room Several old copies of ‘Town Tattle ‘lay on the table together with a copy of ‘Simon Called Peter’ and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway Mrs Wilson was first concerned with the dog A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 33 in the saucer of milk all afternoon Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner When I came back they had disap- peared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of ‘Simon Called Peter’—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn’t make any sense to me Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs Wil- son and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jin- gled up and down upon her arms She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel Mr McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 571 7/24/10 1:17 PM user-f498 /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Summary • obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 572 7/24/10 1:17 PM user-f498 privacy, health, and computer crime, as illustrated in Ethical and Societal Dimensions The vital role of Figure 13.2 information technologies and systems in society raises Employment issues include the loss of jobs—a result serious ethical and societal issues in terms of their imof computerization and automation of work—versus pact on employment, individuality, working conditions, /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin the jobs created to supply and support new information • Ethical Responsibility in Business Business and IT technologies and the business applications they make activities involve many ethical considerations Basic possible The impact on working conditions involves principles of technology and business ethics can serve as the issues of computer monitoring of employees and guidelines for business professionals when dealing with the quality of the working conditions of the jobs that ethical business issues that may arise in the widespread use information technologies heavily The effect of IT use of information technology in business and society on individuality addresses the issues of the depersonaliExamples include theories of corporate social responsization, regimentation, and inflexibility of some compubility, which outline the ethical responsibility of manterized business systems agement and employees to a company’s stockholders, Employees’ heavy use of computer workstations stakeholders, and society, and the four principles of for long periods raises issues about and may cause technology ethics summarized in Figure 13.4 work-related health disorders The use of IT to acSecurity Management One of the most important • cess or collect private information without authoriresponsibilities of the management of a company is to K e y Te r m s a n zation, d C o nasc ewell p t sas for computer profiling, computer ensure the security and quality of its IT-enabled business matching, computer monitoring, and computer libel activities Security management tools and policies can and censorship, raisesThe serious privacy issues Compu- is in parentheses These are the key terms and concepts of this chapter page number of their first explanation ensure the accuracy, integrity, and safety of the informater crime issues surround activities such as hacking, Antivirus software (564) 12 Distributed denial of service 21 Intellectual propertytion systems and resources of a company and thus minicomputer viruses and worms, cyber-theft, unauthor(DDOS) (561) theft (541) mize errors, fraud, and security losses in its business Audit trail (570) ized use at work, software piracy, and piracy of intel13 Encryption (559) 22 Opt-in/Opt-out (546) activities Examples mentioned in the chapter include the Backup files (565) lectual property 14 Ergonomics (553) 23 Passwords (565) use of encryption of confidential business data, firewalls, Biometric security (566) Managers, business professionals, and IS speciale-mail 15 Ethical foundations (528) 24 Security management (555) monitoring, antivirus software, security codes, Business ethics (528) ists can help solve the problems of improper use of backup files, security monitors, biometric security meas16 Fault tolerant (567) 25 Societal solutions (553) Computer crime (534)IT by assuming their ethical responsibilities for the ures, computer failure controls, fault-tolerant systems, 17 Firewall (560) 26 Software piracy (540) Computer matching (548) ergonomic design, beneficial use, and enlightened disaster recovery measures, information system controls, 18 Flaming (550) 27 Spamming (550) Computer monitoringmanagement (551) of information technologies in our and security audits of business systems 19 Hacking (535) 28 Spyware/Adware (544) Computer virus (542) society 10 Cyber law (550) 11 Disaster recovery (569) 20 Information system controls (569) 29 System security monitor (566) 30 Unauthorized use (538) Review Quiz obr76817_ch13_526-578.indd Page 573 7/24/10 1:17 PM user-f498 Match one of the key terms and concepts listed previously with one of the brief examples or definitions that follow Try to find the best fit for the answers that seem to fit more than one term or concept Defend your choices /Users/user-f498/Desktop/MHBR178:Slavin Ensuring the accuracy, integrity, and safety of business/IT activities and resources Software that can control access and use of a computer system Control totals, error signals, backup files, and security codes are examples A computer system can continue to operate even after a major system failure if it has this capability Discussion Questions What can be done to improve the security of business uses of the Internet? Give several examples of security measures and technologies you would use What potential security problems you see in the increasing use of intranets and extranets in business? What might be done to solve such problems? Give several examples Refer to the real-world example about copying CDs and music downloading in the chapter Is copying music CDs an ethical practice? How about Internet music downloading? Explain What are your major concerns about computer crime and privacy on the Internet? What can you about it? Explain What is disaster recovery? How could it be implemented at your school or work? Refer to the Real World Case on IT and ethics in the chapter Most or all companies have an ethics and compliance program of some sort, but not all of them “live” by it What does it take for a company to take this next step? What is the role of IT in that scenario? Is there an ethical crisis in business today? What role does information technology play in unethical business practices? What are several business decisions that you will have to make as a manager that have both ethical and IT dimensions? Give examples to illustrate your answer Refer to the Real World Case on endpoint security in the chapter How companies strike a balance between providing users with access to the information they need in the form that is most useful to them, while at the same time enforcing adequate security? What issues should organizations consider when making this decision? 10 What would be examples of one positive and one negative effect of the use of information technologies in each of the ethical and societal dimensions illustrated in Figure 13.2? Explain several of your choices Analysis Exercises Problems with Passwords Authentication Network and application managers need to know who is accessing their systems to determine appropriate access levels Typically, they require that users create secret passwords A secret password, known only to the user, allows an administrator to feel confident that a user is who the user says he or she is Systems administrators even have the authority to determine the characteristics of passwords For example, they may set a minimum length and require that a password include numbers, symbols, or mixed letter case They may also require that a user change his or her password every few weeks • Users may give away their passwords over the phone (social engineering) or via e-mail (phishing, a type of social engineering) to individuals representing themselves as a system administrator Perhaps you have already received e-mails purportedly from a financial institution claiming identity or account difficulties and asking you to “reconfirm” your account information on their authentic-looking Web site As you can see, using passwords to identify a person is fraught with problems Here are some alternatives to explore Look up each authentication approach listed b l h I d ib h h di Each chapter contains complete pedagogical support in the form of: • Summary Revisiting key chapter concepts in a bullet-point summary • Key Terms and Concepts Using page numbers to reference where terms are discussed in the text • Review Quiz Providing a self-assessment for your students Great for review before an important exam • Discussion Questions Whether assigned as homework or used for in-class • • discussion, these complex questions will help your students develop critical thinking skills Analysis Exercises Each innovative scenario presents a business problem and asks students to use and test their IS knowledge through analytical, Web-based, spreadsheet, and/or database skills Closing Case Studies Reinforcing important concepts with prominent examples from businesses and organizations Discussion questions follow each case study xv