The Evolution of Management Information

Systems: a literature review

Xiaojuan(Julia) Zhang*

School of Information Management

Wuhan University
Wuhan, China

Abstract The Management Information Systems(MISs) have been displaying considerable

diversity during the evolution in the past decades. It comes such a big demand and challenge to
draw an overarching picture of the evolutionary development of MISs. By systematically
investigating the existing representative literature/research in MISs, especially by analyzing and
modeling the MIS concepts, this paper first identifies the crises and challenges the traditional MIS
has faced. Furthermore, by applying EBD, a design methodology, the author analyzes how these
crises have been addressed, and as a result, how the classical MIS Pyramid is transformed and
developed into an intelligence-integration framework for the understanding of MISs evolution,
which is able to not only position various information systems, but also show how these systems
are still interrelated in the whole process of the evolution. The two dimensional framework here
for MISs is conceptual model based, and different from prior frameworks, is able to describe the
overall evolution of management information systems dynamically, rather than just “partially”, or
“statically”. This framework also provides a model applicable to the development of MISs and
information technologies, thus it is has meanings not just academia but also practice. The
descriptive validity or consolidation of the framework is demonstrated by applying it to published
MISs’ studies. Future trends and challenges of MISs are also discussed based on the framework in
this paper.

Keywords management information systems, evolution, framework, Environment Based Design,

, literature review

1. Introduction
The Management Information System (MIS) , or Management Information Systems
(MISs) /Information Systems(ISs), have been displaying considerable diversity during its
evolution in the past decades, which is demonstrated and also highlighted by such
systems as Electronic Data Processing Systems(EDPS)/Transaction Processing
Systems(TPS), Management Information Systems(MIS), Database Management

*
Corresponding author. Email: xjz@whu.edu.cn; xjzhang2003@yahoo.com

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Systems(DBMS), Decision Support Systems(DSS); Group Decision Support
Systems(GDSS), Intelligent Decision Support Systems(IDSS), Executive Information
Systems(EIS), Material Requirement Planning (MRP), Manufacturing Resources
Planning (MRP II), Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP), Data Warehousing (DW) &
Data Mining(DM), and Business Intelligence(BI), and also the application systems in the
internet environment. However, even there are various models and frameworks which
have contributed to the description of a particular part of the MIS field, there is still “no
underlying framework” that provide “systematic” and “holistic” view of it (Bacon and
Fitzgerald, 2001), or even the MIS/IS systems. Meanwhile, numerous research issues
have been raised in doing the research in the stream. It comes such a big demand and
challenge to draw an overarching picture of the evolutionary development of MISs, and
address these issues and concerns. By systematically investigating the existing
representative literature/research in MISs, with an emphasis on analyzing and modeling
the MIS concepts, this paper first clearly identifies the crises and challenges the
traditional MIS has faced. Furthermore, by applying the Environment-based Design
(EBD) methodology, the author analyzes how the crises have been addressed, and as a
result, how the classical MIS Pyramid has been transformed and developed into an
intelligence-integration framework for the understanding of MISs evolution, which is
able to not only position various information systems in terms of their intelligence and
integration degrees, but also show how these systems have been interrelated in the whole
process of their evolution.

2. The Concepts of MIS/MISs

Since the “discussion of the evolution of the MIS area 1 is greatly facilitated by a
definition of the area” (Dickson, 1981), we started our discussion with “what is
conceptually a MIS? “ Some published definitions of management information system(s)
are quoted as the following for further discussion.

2.1 Classical and modern definitions of MIS/MISs

When MIS concept was first used in late 1950, the system it represented only had
plan and control functions. However, in 1960s – 1970s, the expectation of both
researchers and practitioners in the business management community had raised as high
as a single system for all management requirement, namely a total system (Dearden,
1972). As of early 1980s, two of the “commonly referenced definitions” (Dickson, 1981)
of a specific management information system, were as the following:

Definition 1
Davis(1974) described management information system as “an integrated,
man/machine system for providing information to support the operations, management,
and decision-making functions in an organization. The system utilizes computer
hardware and software, manual procedures, management and decision models, and a
database.”

1
Authors in business management community use MIS area or field frequently. The MIS area or field
includes management information systems research subject/discipline, activities such as system planning,
analysis, design and development, and the above mentioned technological systems such as TDP, MRP, ERP,
DSS, OLAP, Data warehouse, BI, etc.

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Definition 2
A management information system is an organized method of providing past,
present, and projection information relating to internal operation and external
intelligence. It supports the planning, control, and operational functions of an
organization by furnishing uniform information in the proper time-frame to assist the
decision-making process (Kennevan, 1970, p21).

In contemporary works, researchers in business management communities have

presented their broader views of management information system.

Definition 3
Baskerville and Myers (2002) broadly defined MISs as ”the development, use and
application of information systems by individuals, organizations and society.”

It is of note that in the past few decades, MIS has gone through a steady shift from a
techno-centric focus to a balanced view of technology, organizational, management, and
social focus (Baskerville and Myers, 2002). We also need to point out that management
information system, or management information systems, has, since it came into being,
evolved into such a broad concept, or an collective concept for a body of concepts as it
expands the scope of information processing to include not only applications for business
transactions and operations, but also applications that support its administrative and
management functions, and support organizational and inter-organizational
communications and coordination. In addition, we also noticed that the terms
management information system(MIS) and information system(IS) are synonyms, which
means their meanings are identical and interchangeable (Reilly, 2003).

In this contribution, the author defines a MIS as a specific management information

system, and MISs, as a collective term which includes a body of technological systems
such as DSS, ERP, BI, etc.(in this sense, MISs is identical with ISs). In addition, the
“MIS field” includes management information systems research subject/discipline,
activities such as system planning, analysis, design and development, and the above
mentioned technological systems, etc. This present research has a focus on MIS and
MISs, while also taking the relevant research in MIS field as some references in
discussing the evolutionary development of management information systems.

2.2 The MIS Pyramid

The MIS Pyramid, as shown in Figure 1, originated from the three levels of
managerial activity of Anthony(1965), the decision-making categories of Simon(1977),
and the triangle to characterize MIS used by Head(1967) . Later various authors added
transactional processing as a base on which the entire system rested, and its further
extension was made in the work of Sprague (1980). The complete MIS Pyramid was first
delivered in the work of Davis and Olson(1985) .

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Figure 1. The MIS as a Pyramid
One
important and interesting thing is that with the scope of systems providing information
technology services increasing dramatically, and as a result, the concept of MIS or MISs has
greatly expanded in the past decades, the broad concept of MIS as a system “that combines
transaction and operational requirements with administrative and management support
remains valid”(Reilly, 2003). As a proof, the Pyramid is still commonly cited by current
business management communities while describing MIS(Davis, 2005).

Research Issue One: how the core parts, which are depicted by the MIS Pyramid,
remain stable while the whole systems dramatically expanding?

2.3 Classifications of MIS definitions

To provide a clear picture of MIS or MISs, some researchers also made their great
efforts on the classification of its representative definitions or descriptions. Based on the
works of such researchers as Davis(1974), Moravec(1965), Schwartz(1969),
Kriebel(1972), Mason and Mitroff(1973), and Honold(1972), etc., Ein-Dor and Segev’s
showed the audience how the MIS picture was evolving:

By late 1970s, the “definitions of MIS fall into two broad categories. Those in the
first category are design oriented and place considerable emphasis on the physical
realization of the system as one of the distinguishing features of a MIS, and refer to
computer hardware and software, data bases and decision models. Definitions in the
second category are use oriented and distinguish MIS entirely in terms of their function
in the organization – support for management” (Ein-Dor & Segev, 1978).

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 The classification was made more clear in their work of 1981: “there seem to be two
classes of definition of MIS, one definition calibrates Management Information Systems
by their degree of integration. An extreme view regards only a completely integrated
total model of the organization as being an MIS …. The second class of definition
defines a management information system as an information system that serves
management, rather than serving operations or process control functions. In this view,
management information systems are one of many co-equal types of information
systems. … Given this definition, a simple, stand-alone, un-integrated information
system serving management is a management information system. This is a use-oriented
approach that states that a system is an MIS when it is used by a manager who finds it
useful in the performance of that manager’s duties.”(Ein-Dor and Segev, 1981)

Research Issue Two: Are there two types of MIS, integrated and un-integrated?

3. Evolution of MIS’s Foundations and Systems

Attempts to illustrate the evolutionary development of the management information
systems have been expressed in different ways. With an emphasize on MIS concept and
MIS systems, we invest our efforts on describing what have been involving in terms of
MIS as technologic systems and, closely related with that, MIS an umbrella concept,
rather than probing into MIS subareas or activities.

3.1 The evolution of MIS foundations

Studies in the stream of MIS subject or discipline include those who have examined
the necessary foundations or reference disciplines for this field.

As early as mid 1970s, Davis stated that “four major areas of concept and system
development are especially significant in tracing the evolution of the MIS concept:
managerial accounting, management science, management theory, and computer
processing” (Davis, 1974). Later on, he suggested that MIS represents the intersection of
six fields of knowledge: computer science, behavioral science, decision science,
organization and management, organizational function and management accounting
(Davis, 1980).

Swanson and Culnan (Swanson, 1984; Culnan, & Swanson, 1986) held that three
fields of study constituted necessary foundations for MIS: computer science,
management science, and organization science. Each focuses on foundational elements
held to be fundamental to the study – computer science focuses on data, hardware, and
software as basic elements of study; management science attends to problems, models,
and solvers; and organization science studies individuals, organizations, and institutions.

Through the work of Grover et al(2006), it became appropriate to “explicitly

consider Economics and Marketing as reference disciplines for IS (management
information systems) in addition to the often used classical disciplines(of Davis and
Swason’s) .”

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 From one or more perspectives of the above mentioned areas/fields held to be
fundamental to the study of MIS, different definitions of MIS have showed different
focus or emphasis, which validates the above discussion. For example, Definition 1 and 2
are technology focus; others may emphasize management and technology(Law, 2009), or
be organization and technology oriented (Reilly, 2003), which helps us to understand the
great diversity of the MISs concepts.

3.2 The evolution of MIS systems:

As mentioned above, the meanings of MISs and ISs are identical. Moreover, there is
a recent tendency to use the simpler term information systems while the term MIS is still
in common use (Reilly, 2003). This tendency shows the information systems represent
MISs well.

In terms of information systems, MISs ranges from the original, basic data
processing system that records transaction data to sophisticated expert system, such as
intelligent computer programs that provide advice on decision making. The
representative enterprise information systems include: EDPS/TPS, MIS, DBMS, DSS,
GDSS, IDSS, EIS, MRP, MRP II, ERP, DW & DM, and BI, etc. Each system represents a
certain stage in the process of the MISs evolution. They have distinguished advantages to
meet different business management requirements.

Figure 2 offers the chronicles of the evolutionary development of MISs, beginning

with EDPS/TPS in 1950s, evolving into traditional MIS in 60s and the collaborative
Systems in the Internet environment after 2000(Watson, et al, 1997; Rashid, et al, 2002;
Arnott, 2005). As a result of the evolution, it comes out the considerable diversity of
MISs.

Research Issues Three: How are those systems related to each other in the process
of their evolution? For example, how EDP led to MIS, and how ERP and EIS “infringed
on” the traditional MIS? (Helms, 2009 )?

Through our discussion in Section 2 and 3, we can find out that in addition to the
static depicts of a MIS or MISs, it is also a “process” which has been producing various
systems. The great diversity of those systems makes the evolution of MIS complex and
the researcher and practitioners confused.

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 1950-
Electronic Data Processing Systems, EDPS
Database Management Systems, DBMS

Late 1950s --
Management Information Systems, MIS

1970-
Material Requirments Planning, MRP
Decision Support Systems, DSS
Personal Decision Support Systems, PDSS

1980-
Manufaturing Resources Planning, MRPII
Group Decision Support Systems, GDSS
Intelligent Decision Support Systems, IDSS
Executive Information Systems, EIS

1990-
Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP
Data Warehousing, DW
Business Intelligence, BI

2000-
Extended ERP/ERP II
Collaborative Systems
Knowledge Management-based DSS

Fig 2. The Chronicles of the Evolutionary Development of MISs

Aiming to clarify the confusion and provide a framework for the dynamic
evolutionary process of MISs, in the rest parts of this contribution, the author first
discusses the necessity of review of MISs evolution in Section 4. Then, the EBD, a
design methodology is introduced to this review In Section 5, followed by the application
of this methodology to analyze how the crises MIS faced are identified and addressed.
Section 6 focuses on the analysis of the transforming of the MIS Pyramid as a result of
the crises-addressing, which leads to the introduction and consolidation of a two

7
dimensional framework of intelligence and integration. Section 7 probes into future
trends of MISs based on the framework. Section 8 briefly concludes this contribution.

4. The Evaluation of Existing MIS Framework and the Purposes of this

paper
There are two folds of reasons why the author makes this literature review
contribution.

4.1 The evaluation of existing frameworks in MIS field

The evaluation of existing frameworks in MIS field gives the general reasons, that
is, the importance and necessity of an overarching framework for MISs.

As early as 1971 it was realized that “a framework for viewing management

information systems is essential if an organization is to plan effectively and make
sensible allocation of resources to information systems tasks.” “Without a framework to
guide management and systems planners, the system tends to serve the strongest manager
or react to the greatest crisis. As a result, system activities too often move from crisis to
crisis, following no clear path (highlight added by the author of this paper) and receiving
only ex post facto justification (Gorry & Morton Scott, 1971 ) .

In the point of view of Bacon and Fitzgerald(2001), various models which have
contributed to the description of a particular part of the MIS/IS field, such as (a)an
information system, (b)strategic systems planning approaches, (c)types of development,
(d)types of system/application, and (e)research themes, have been highlighted and
reviewed. In addition, the models of Culnan(1986), Culnan and Swanson(1986), and
Dickson(1981) also classified the intellectual progression of the field. However, even
though there were “various models” to describe MIS, there was still “no underlying
framework” that provide “systematic” and “holistic” view of MIS/IS field(Keen, 1991;
Bacon & Fitzgerald, 2001).

Bacon and Fitzgerald’s work derives a systematic framework for the MIS/IS field
and, within the framework, a central theme. Five main areas of the framework integrate
with each other -- IS Development, Acquisition & Support, People & Organization,
Information for Knowledge Work, Customer Satisfaction & Business Performance,
Information & Communication Technology(ICT), and Operations & Network
Management. It emphasized the IS/MIS activities, information technologies, and
organizations, rather than the MIS systems as a whole, or their evolution.

Gorry and Scott Morton’s framework for MIS(1971) and Sprague’s for DSS(1980)
used to be two of “the best known and most useful frameworks”(Waston, et al, 1991).
Among the most inspiring classical works, both have been fueling the present studies of
this stream. In its reprint of 1989, the broad thrust of their original analysis of decision
making activities remained valid. Although Gorry and Scott Mortons’s work was entitled
a framework for MIS, it was actually developed “for managerial activities, not for

8
information systems” (Gorry and Scott Mortons, 1971). Sprague’s framework for DSS
has also offered some detail information concerning the characteristics of early EDP and
MIS through comparison, and questioned the DSS evolution based on the data --
information -- decision making transition. Even these two works have highlighted the
shift of MIS’s emphasis from transaction processing to management activities since
1970s, they mainly focused on a part of MISs evolution, rather than the whole.

The study of Millet et al (1992) has showed that the transition from the traditional
MIS stage to an online EIS stage requires a shift along two dimensions: (1 )a move from
batch to interactive online environment, and (2) an increase in information integration
and focus. However, this framework only covered the evolutionary stages from
traditional MIS to online EIS. Associated with that, the paths of the evolution were all
confined within the framework without “attempting effect both transitions
simultaneously.” (Millet, et al, 1992)

Greiner’s work in Harvard Business Review (1972) built a general, dynamic model
for organization development. The author shows how companies can turn organizational
crises into opportunities for the future growth. This work was reprinted in 1992 and
drawn record citations.

The reprints above mentioned have prompted the need for the framework for MIS
evolution through early 1970s to late 1990s. It has also become a huge challenge given
the ongoing processes and great diversities showed in the evolutionary development of
MISs.

Research Issue Four: How was the confusion of Sprague’s generated and how could
it be clarified?

4.2 The Purposes of this Paper

More specifically, the targets of this contribution are, in addition to address the
Research Issues raised in each Section, as the following:

(1) To provide a framework to describe the dynamic evolution of MISs. Corresponding

to this dynamic process, this framework will position the key information systems in
motion, as a result, it will also
(2) To provide “paths” of how the MISs have evolved -- they have been advancing
independently while still having close interrelationships and even working
collaboratively with each other to help enterprises improve their productivity.

The framework here for MISs will be conceptual model based and also a model
applicable to the development of MISs and information technologies, thus it has
meanings not just academia but also practice.

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5. Design Methodology and its Application in this Review

5.1. Coupling EBD methodology with MISs evolution

Dicksen(1981) held that “both terms, MIS and DSS, refer to a product produced by
a process. Unfortunately, both terms have been applied to the process as well as the
product, which has caused no end of confusion.” In this Section, the author will make
efforts on the application of design methodology to clarify the “confusion”.

Design is both a process and a product. And the result of design science research in
IS, or MIS, is a purposeful IT artifact, or product, created to address an identified
organizational problem (Hevner, et al, 2004), help achieve organization goals or in other
words, meet the expectation of the designers. Such artifacts are represented in a
structured form that may vary from software, formal logic to informal natural language
descriptions.

In the view of Environment Based Design(EBD) as a design methodology, the

above mentioned process and product in design actually aims to change an existing
environment to a desired one by creating a new artifact (Zeng, 2004). To this end, EBD
also provides procedures throughout this environment change process.

EBD consists of three major activities: the environmental analysis targeting to

define the current environment system, the conflict identification aiming at identifying
undesired conflicts between environment component, and solution generation targeting to
generate a design solution by resolving a group of chosen conflicts. The generated
solution will become a part of the new product environment for the succeeding design
(Zeng, 2011). The environmental analysis is the initial and fundamental activity. One of
the key methods of this activity is to conduct semantic analysis of the informal natural
language descriptions, the MIS definition in our case, through Recursive Object Model
(ROM) based on the work of Zeng (2008), which reveals the customer’s real intent and
the complete requirements of MISs as products. Starting from the ROM, we will be able
to identify conflictions among the environmental component constraints. The constraints
and undesired conflicts, are actually corresponding to the “crisis” in business
communities, such as Gorry & Morton Scott identified in their work(1971), in the
existing environment. As the third activity of EBD, a set of environment conflicts will be
chosen to be resolved. After ROM is generated, some questions should be asked to make
every object in the ROM diagram clear (Wang & Zeng, 2009). These three activities
work together progressively and simultaneously to generate and refine the design
specifications and design solutions(Zeng et al, 2012).

5.2 The Application of EBD in the Analysis of MISs Evolution

5.2.1 A Modified MIS Definition

When viewing MIS as an IT product, the definition of MIS presents its product

10
requirement, which will lead our study of MIS to EBD. To this end, the classical MIS
definition should be adapted and used because we are investigating the MIS evolution
since its early stage. The aforementioned Definition 1 set emphasis more on system and
functions while Definition 2, on information. Combining the two definitions, it may be
reasonable to define MIS as:

an integrated, man/machine system for providing uniform information to support the

operations, management, and decision-making functions in an organization.

Following the three major steps of EBD analysis, we will identify and detail these
requirements one by one.

5.2.2 Environmental Analysis

At first, a ROM diagram is generated as shown in Figure 3. The main objects are
“system” and “information” since they have the most constrained relationships in the
ROM diagram. Furthermore, the most critical environment objects are ”operation”,
“management”, and “decision making” due to the potential conflicts of “supporting
operation, management AND decision making.” These five objects constitute the major
environment components.

5.2.3 Conflicts Identification and Solution Generation through Q & A

Then some questions should be asked about the above major environmental
components to specify the constraints and objects with conflicts. Taking the “system” as
an example, we should ask the questions to the unclear constraints “integrated” to
analyze the hidden environmental variables. The questions could be raised as “what do
you mean by integrated?”, “what do you mean by the man/machine system?” To make it
clear, we listed all related questions in Table 1.

Through answering these questions, the crises will be identified and corresponding
solutions will be generated.

Based on EBD, the object “operation” could be regarded as the starting environment
component, therefore we attempt to analyze and answer Question 4 first.

Q4 What do you mean by operation?

Before traditional MIS was developed, the computer hardware and software was
mostly used to deal with the operational applications, or transaction processing(TPS), or
equivalently, the data processing(EDP) , which involved such transactions as accepting a
customer order, making a payment, producing business documents, conducting
accounting affairs, and saved the human effort in conducting the repetitive operations in
an organization.

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 Figure 3: An initial ROM Diagram for the MIS Objectives

Table 1: The questions asked based on the Initial ROM diagram

Question No. Question Content

Q1 What do you mean by integrated?
Q2 What do you mean by man/machine?
Q3 What do you mean by uniform?
Q4 What do you mean by operation?
Q5 What are the management (activities)?
Q6 What are the decision-making functions?

Q1 What do you mean by integrated?

However, different business transactions are actually linked with each other in an
organization, and different TPS therefore faced the data sharing problem when the
organization was viewed as a whole. As a result, the integration of different TPS into
some across function systems came to serve as the solution. Examples of such kind of
integration were given as production MIS, marketing MIS, and personnel MIS, etc.,
which could be regarded as MIS sub-systems.

During the 1960s most organizations designed and implemented centralized

computing systems to automate their inventory control systems. The integration of

12
different TPS, or MIS’s sub-systems’ functions was still limited and couldn’t eliminate
the barriers between different functions of operation and thus couldn’t tackle with the
coordination problem in an organization (Giachetti, 2004).

In the classical definition of a MIS, the term “integrated” was closely associated
with the concept of the “Total Systems.” As a matter of fact, the Total Systems Concept
was regarded as an advanced approach in the design of the MIS for optimum integration
of information (Heyel, 1973). At that time, the MIS had even been called Total
Management Information System, which intended to be the company’s only information
system. However, in the point of view of Gorry & Scott Morton (1971), the “totally-
integrated-management-information-systems” idea was a poor design concept. Dearden
(1972) stated that the objective of meeting the information needs of all managers in the
firm with a single system, that is, “a single, completely integrated super system -- a MIS
-- to help it govern every aspect of its activity”, was impossible. The emphasis of MIS
should be on “addressing needs of subsets of managers.” He told the widespread feelings
of frustration of MIS during that time (Ackoff, 1967, Hershman, 1968, Dearden, 1966).

The need for software specifically designed for manufacturing operations led to the
development of MRP, MRP II, and ERP packaged application. By examining the history,
it could be inferred that the concept of ERP has evolved from simple inventory
management systems to MRP and MRP II(Orlicky, 1975; Vollman et al., 1997; Chung &
Snyder, 2000).

As the backbone of information technology for planning and controlling a

manufacturing enterprise, which was used to be the key functions classical MIS actually
performed, MRP systems were developed in the 1970s, followed by the introduction of
the MRP II systems in 1980s. With a common database, the MRP II systems possessed
the capacity to coordinate operations across different functions in a company and started
to take over the MIS’ responsibilities of transaction processing.

Based on MRP and MRP II, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems appeared in
the late 1980s with the power of enterprise-wide inter-functional coordination and
integration (Rashid, et al, 2002; Holland & Light, 1999 ). ERP systems is featured with
“One database, one application ... across the entire enterprise” (Tadjer, 1998; Al-Mashari,
et al, 2003), namely, “one integrated solution” in an organization(Chung & Snyder, 2000;
Gable, 1998; Waston, et al., 1999).

And ERP can be used not only in manufacturing companies but in any company that
wants to enhance competitiveness through effectively using information (Umble, et al,
2003). During the 1990s ERP systems even became the de-facto standard for
replacement of legacy systems in large, and particularly multi-national companies (Parr
and Shanks, 2000). Davenport (1998) states that the business world's embraced of ERP
systems, or the enterprise systems as he called, may in fact be the most important
development in the corporate use of information technology in the 1990s.

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 Therefore, the answer to Q1could be as the following: “this system integrates TPS
into MIS subsystems, and furthermore, integrates MIS subsystems into MRP, MRP II and
ERP”. With this answer, the Integration through TPS, MIS to ERP is displayed in Figure
4.

Figure 4. The Integration through TPS, MIS Sub-systems to ERP

In terms of integration, ERP seems to successfully meet the expectation for

traditional MIS. With the generation of ERP, the MIS system is able to support enterprise
wide TPS functions well, and the conflict between “supporting operation, management
AND decision making” is partly addressed this way, as showed in Figure 5.

However it is of importance to understand that ERP has not realized the dream of
“totally management-information-systems”, rather, as explained earlier, it only integrated
some sub-systems of MIS which were transaction processing related. As a result, for
many years, ERP platforms had only transaction-processing capabilities and some basic
capabilities including simple reporting, and simple analysis(Turban, et al, 2011 ). In the
description of ERP objectives, researchers just stopped with the identification of its
management report functions (Lonzinsky, 1998) . Decision support was even not
explicitly recognized as a major reason for the implementation (Holsapple & Sena,
2005).

In other words, ERP is the integrated system representing the first type of MIS
definition classifications in Section 2.3. As for MIS, it also “designated a specific
category of information systems to serve management activity”(Laudon &Laudon,

14
2012 ), which fall into the second category of the aforementioned MIS definition
classifications.

Further question with Q1 could be “How to integrate?”Based on the conceptual

model proposed by Blumenthal(1969), which described an integrated architecture and
framework for organizational ISs, Giachetti(2004)’s four- layer integration framework
was analyzed along with some more recent works on system integration, or information
integration, in the enterprise environment (Vernadat, 2002; Lee, et al, 2003; Lim, 1997;
Kosanke, et al, 1999; Spencer, 2002; Jhingran, et al, 2002; Roth, et al, 2002 ), and
presented as a framework of system integration with five inter-related layers, namely,
physical, data, application, business process/function, and presentation, in which the
higher level integration could be implemented based on the lower levels, in the work of
Zhang(2007, 2008).

Figure 5: An Updated ROM Diagram for the MIS Objective: Integration

Perspective

Q5 What are the management (activities)?

A widely accepted view classified the management activities into three levels: the
operational control, the management control and strategic planning (Anthony 1965;
Gorry & Morton, 1971). The operational control means “assuring specific tasks are
carried out effectively and efficiently”; the management control means “assuring
resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in the accomplishment of
organization objectives”; and the strategic planning means “deciding on objectives of

15
the organization, on changes in those objectives, on resources used to attain these
objectives, and on policies that are govern the acquisition, use and disposition of these
resources.” (Gorry & Morton, 1971)

Q6 What are decision making functions?

A general process for any decision making activities was described by Simon(1977),
namely, intelligence, design, and choice. The information support for programmed or un-
programmed decision-making is needed from operational control level to strategically
planning level using structured or unstructured data (Sprague, 1980).

The traditional MIS focused on providing managers with structural, periodic reports
using much of the information from accounting and transaction systems (Power, 2003).
A MIS is able to support the operation control by coordinating different TPS as it can
help solve the data sharing problem in different TPS. Meanwhile, “management
information systems also designates a specific category of information systems serving
middle management “(Laudon &Laudon, 2012, p47 ).

In the late 1960s, a new type of information system, model-oriented DSS, became
practical (Power, 2003). The term “decision support systems” appeared in Gorry and
Scott Morton’s work (1971) and it was first defined as a system “to focus on managers’
decision support activities and needs while expanding their capabilities.” (Keen & Scott
Morton, 1978). By the late 1970s, DSSs had involved diverse systems which used data,
both structured data and unstructured documents(Swanson & Culnan, 1978) and models
to help managers analyze semi-structured problem.

Gorry and Scott Morton(1971) conceived DSS as systems that support any decision
–makings that are semi-structured or unstructured. This definition was soon narrowed
down to semi-structured managerial decisions(Keen & Scott Morton, 1978); a scope that
survives to this days(Arnott & Pervan, 2005), which actually provided the perception of
traditional DSS.

As of early 1980s, with the potential of PDSS and GDSS, “most of the existent
published works coincide in their understanding of DSS as tools to aid decision-making
with problems that are not well structured” (Vierck, 1981). Actually from those early
days, it was already recognized that DSS could be designed to support decision-makings
at any level through operations to strategic planning in an organization (Powell, 2003),
which means DSS has developed into a collective term, DSSs, to include, traditional
DSS, PDSS, GDSS, and later on, EIS, and so on.

Even the relationships of DSS and MIS were debatable(Naylor, 1982; Watson &
Hill, 1983) and the descriptions of DSS had kept migrating through early 1970s to early
1980s (Sol, 1987). Distinguished from traditional MIS, a DSS is decision focused and
able to perform decision making functions which the MIS couldn’t make.

16
 The emergence of DSS and its early evolution is presented in Figure 6.

As a summary and further discussion of Q5 & 6, it is of note the “intelligence” of

traditional MIS started to draw the attention of the researchers in 1970s and 1980s. To
expand MIS’s role from a “servant” to “helper” to decision maker, “intelligent” MIS
should be built(King, 1973). “A complete system designed to collect data, process them
into information, and convert them into intelligence suitable for goal-setting and strategy
determination” could be developed by expanding the typical MIS with operation-oriented
data base to a system with strategic intelligence capability(Johnson & Derman, 1970).

However, here comes the confusion in the expansion of traditional MIS in term of
the transition from data to information, and so on. Besides the above mentioned data -
>information-> intelligence transition in Johnson & Derman’s study , the advancing from
“data focus” -- EDP, “information focus” -- MIS, to “decision focus” – DSS was also
discussed and displayed in the “Connotational View” and it was immediately
doubted(Sprague,1980). Actually, it is confusing to see “intelligence” or “decision”
follow data – Information in terms of the data - information transition/hierarchy.

Figure 6 An Updated ROM Diagram for the MIS Objective: DSSs for Decision Making

Based on the critical thinking and analysis of the roles and relationships of data,

17
information, knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence (Ackoff, 1989, Sharma, 2008, Tuomi,
1999; Alavi & Leidner, 2001; Frické, 2009; Ahsan & Shan, 2006; Firestone &
McElroym, 2003) and their functions in decision support activities (Choo, 1996; Delic &
Daya, 2003), Zhang (2007, 2009, 2010) came to the conclusion that human intelligence
is associated with business administration activities in implementing decision-making
function. In other words, human intelligence is “projected, or mapped, to” business
administration through decision-support information systems”.

Thus, the TPS/MIS/DSS framework of Sprague’s could be modified as: the

operational control is data focused and corresponding to the Transaction Processing
System; the management control is information focused and corresponding to the
Management Information System, and the strategic planning is knowledge focused, and
corresponding to the Decision Supporting System. The whole framework can be seen as
the Matrix Model in Figure 7.

Figure 7. The Evolutionary Perspective of the Classical TPS/MIS/DSS

Framework

However, to be more accurate, the early DSS, which is specified in Figure 7, was
not yet a knowledge based decision support system, rather, it was a transition system
from information-based to knowledge based system(Zhang, 2010).

Q3 What is uniform information?

Traditional MIS counts on the information from operational databases to support
both transaction processing and decision making activities. Underlying the idea of totally
integrated MIS system, it was expected that a “company wide database” was able to
provide uniform information. Just like the concept of MIS as the “Totally Integrated –
Management-Information Systems", “company wide database” was also a “misleading
notion” as it was a poor design concept(Gorry and Scott Morton, 1971). In practice, a
TPS is often designed in an independent fashion aiming to support a particular

18
organizational function. This resulted in traditional MIS which used mostly internal data
lacked data integration across functional areas, which in turn, becomes a severe
limitation when attempting to satisfy the needs of top-management for “comprehensive,
company-wide information”(Millet, et al, 1992) .

ERP extends the concept of shared database to all functions within a company. Like
its MRPII ancestors, ERP systems rely on a common database throughout the company.
By entering data only once at the source and making it accessible to all functions in an
organization, ERP allows each function to interact with one centralized database. Besides
a unified view of the business that encompass all functions and department, ERP
provides another major benefit, that is, “an enterprise database where all business
transactions are entered, recorded, processed, monitored, and reported”(Umble, et al,
2003)

However the dream of comprehensive information didn’t become a reality until the
data warehouse emerged in 1990s. The roots of building a data warehouse lies in
improved database technologies. Rather than having data scattered across a variety of
systems, a data warehouse integrates the data, both internal and external, into a single
repository, and provides “comprehensive data”. All users and applications access the
same data.

Similar to the situation of ERP, whose integration doesn’t mean the total MIS
system, the data warehouse is not “a single source of data for all processing”, or “single-
database-serving- all-purposes including transaction processing and MIS/DSS reporting”
(Inmon, 2002), or, in other words, “uniform information” as expected of traditional MIS.
Rather, a data warehouse is “simply a set of databases created to serve as dedicated
source of data to support decision-making applications” (Gray and Watson, 1998; Cooper
et al., 2002). Other researchers also regarded data warehouse as a solution for integrating
data from diverse operational databases for ad hoc use, such as the support of decision
making process and business intelligence (Inmon, 2002; Inmon & Hackathorn, 1994;
Kimball, 1996).

19
Figure 8 An Updated ROM Diagram for the MIS Objectives: Data Warehouse for
Decision Making

Based on the above discussion, Figure 8 shows the way how data warehouse, later
on BI, was generated, and functions to support decision making activities.

Q2 what do you mean man/machine?

Man/machine actually meant “user/machine”(Davis, 1985), and the interaction,
between them. Commonly used interchangeably with terms as man-machine interaction,
computer and human interaction, human-machine interaction(Booth, 1989), the concept
of Human Computer Interaction/Interfacing was automatically represented with the
emerging of computer, or more generally machine, itself(Karry, et al, 2008).

Generally speaking, such issues concerning HCI as user attitudes, perceptions,

acceptance, and use of IT have been among the long standing issues and major themes of
MIS research since early days in computing (Lucas, 1975), along with studies on
programmer cognitions and end user involvement in systems development(Zhang, 2005).
It has strong “skill” and “behavior” components (Card, et al., 1984), and targets to
improve the interactions between users and computers by making computers more
usable and receptive to the user's needs(Olson &Olson, 2003; HCI in Wikipedia, 2012). 

20
 It would be reasonable to reach a conclusion that HCI is about human behaviors in
using computer systems, or ISs, and aims to improve the performance of ISs. In
straightforward way, it is associated with different ISs, but not, and doesn’t leads to, an
independent information system as discussed in this contribution.

5.3. A summary of Section 5

Through our discuss in Section 5 so far, the crises traditional MIS faced are
graphically presented and can be observed as conflicts generated in the initial ROM
diagram in Figure 3. And the answers to each of these questions have been making
efforts to explain how the solutions were generated in practice.

Before we end Section 5 with an attempt to explain why the crises of traditional
MIS emerged, it may be of benefit to take a look at if the definitions and descriptions of
MIS continued to be help with our understanding of how these crises were addressed
conceptually. To this end, here we also list two definitions of MIS in 1980s for a
comparison with those in 1970s:

“MIS is an integrated, user/machine system for providing information to support

operation, management, analysis and decision-making functions in an organization. The
fact is that it is an integrated system does not mean that it is a single, monolithic
structure; rather, it means that the parts fit into an overall design.”
(Davis, 1985)

“In the simplest, most straightforward terms, MIS deals with all the informational
and decision making activity associated with operating an organization. It I is the desire
of those working in the MIS area to encourage better organizational efficiency and
effectiveness through facilitating information provision and decision support to
management.”
(Dickson, 1981)

Comparing the two definitions of Davis in 1974 and 1985, respectively, we noticed
that he further explained the integration feature of MIS, and overcame the limits of “a–
single-integrated-system” perception brought about to traditional MIS vision. Dickson
used a general definition, which was able to accommodate the evolution of MISs, but
alone it couldn’t make justice to the diversity and complexity of MISs.

The goal of the traditional MIS was to make information in transaction processing
systems available to management for decision-making purposes. The design vision of
such a system was not regarded as reasonable, and in practice, the ideal MIS was not
successful, either.

The contributing factors to MIS’s failure might involve that the management didn’t
understand how his information system worked, only how to use it; or, the managerial
understanding was separated from design understanding (Swanson, 1974).

21
 However the main causes of this failure may lies in the reality that the 1960s was
the era of mainframes, punch cards, etc. the relational database were years away(Watson,
et al, 1997, p10). Initially Codd proposed the relational data model for databases in
1970(Codd, 1970). To be of support in practice, a database was expected to be serve as a
single source of data for all processing” in 1970s, and “single-database-serving- all-
purposes including transaction processing and MIS/DSS reporting” in 1980s (Inmon,
2002). However, even database has set a great impact on both business transaction
processing systems and decision support systems(Shim, et al., 2002), no single database
could serve both operational transaction processing and analytical processing at the same
time (Inmon, 2002). This coincides with the conflict analysis based on Figure 3, and the
solutions given in Figure 5, 6, and 8.

The ways of addressing the crises traditional MIS faced were observed by some
researchers as “some applications have infringed on the familiar MIS landscapes,
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and executive information systems (EIS)
both provide packaged modules and programs that perform the same functions as
traditional MIS, but with greater functionality, flexibility, and integration.” (Helms,
2009).

6 The Two-Dimensional Intelligence-Integration Framework: Development

and Consolidation
Since the representative definitions of MIS field are able to facilitate the discussion
of the evolution of the field, in this contribution, we conduct our analysis of MISs, or ISs
evolution starting with a traditional MIS concept. By applying EBD methodology, the
concept of traditional MIS is modified, the crises of traditional MIS as “a total integrated
management-information-system” faced are identified and the solutions are generated,
which is also validated by the representative research in MIS community since 1950s.
Through the analysis, we observed that the MIS Pyramid has actually been
transformed and an intelligence-integration two-dimensional framework can be built.

6.1 The Transforming of MIS Pyramid and the Introducing of Intelligence

Dimension

Figure 7 actually leads to the transforming of MIS pyramid as shown in Figure 9.

Now we give a further explanation of the transforming and the intelligence

dimension: with the transforming, the confusion specified in Sprague’s(1980) is clarified.
In addition, instead of the “collapse” of the “Information Pyramid( Friend, 1992) due to
the introduction and development of EIS. This transforming can accommodate, or even
predict the future evolution of DSS. More importantly, the transforming shows the
interconnection of systems in the evolutionary process in the practice. As an example,
Watson et al(1997)’s explanation of EIS has provided a proof of this interconnection and
thus validated the transforming. He held that there should not be “unrealistic expectations
of EIS” even it offers great potential. As a picture of the real world, “TPS are still

22
required. Furthermore, most EIS need to access the summary report the TPS generate.
MIS will still supply reports that serve well-defined information needs while some of the
reporting and query capabilities of MIS will be incorporated into the EIS, especially if it
spread downward in the organization. DSS are still used to analyze specific, poorly-
structured decision-making tasks. While some DSS applications remain outside of the
EIS, others are integrated into it, thus providing both analysis and information display
capabilities. Expert systems(ES) may add intelligence to the EIS, but many ES
applications stand alone(p12).”

Strategic
Planning/DSS

Management
Control/MIS
Operational
Control

TPS

intelligence
Data Information Knowledge Wisdom

Figure 9 Transforming of MIS Pyramid and the Introducing of Intelligence Dimension

6.2 The Transforming of MIS Pyramid and the Introducing of Integration

Dimension

As a matter of fact, the EDP and traditional MIS, as the ancestors of DSS, were not
just “data focus” or “information focus” along the intelligence dimension, they were, at
the same time, featured with “integrated files”, and “integration of EDP jobs” as also
specified by Sprague(1980). Obviously, the integration didn’t extend to traditional DSS
after MIS, rather, it extended to ERP, which also rooted in EDP/TPS as demonstrated in
our analysis of Figure 4. The integration dimension is thus formed based on both the
above transforming and the transition described in Figure 4. As a result, a two
dimensional framework is built in Figure 10.

During the 1990s ERP vendors added more modules and functions to the core
modules, which gave birth to the “extended ERPs” (Rashid, et al, 2002)., or ERP II in
Gartner Research’s term(Bond et al, 2000). ERP II is basically an extension of the
traditional ERP systems (Weston Jr., 2003), which included all areas of a company
ranged from the order management, manufacturing, human resources, financial systems,
to the distribution with external suppliers and customers, and linked into a tightly
integrated systems with shared data. When successfully implemented, the potential
benefits of the systems include the ability to view and manage the extended enterprise of

23
suppliers, alliances, and customers as an integrated whole (Escalle et al, 1999) . In
practice, enterprise system developers have started to develop supply chain
management(SCM) and customer relationship management(CRM) systems in an attempt
to seamlessly link front office and back office applications to enhance competitive
advantages since 1990s, which represents the trend of ERP through 1990s to early
2000s(Chen, 2001).

With SCM and CRM extensions, ERPs are becoming the e-business backbone for
organizations doing online business transactions over the Internet. ERP software has
even been termed as “business integration in a box” or “megapackages” (Glass, 1998) as
tightly “integrated, thereby closely coupling systems” (Alvaraz, 2002). With the
application of new integration technology such as software componentisation, Enterprise
Application Integration (EAI), service-oriented architecture(SOA) and web services, “a
common observation on the future trends in ERP is its further expansion in scope.”
(Moon, 2007) In other words, ERP’s “tight integration” is “generalized” in the Internet
environment , which means ERP has formed huge systems-on-promise through
integrating more( rather than more integrated).
Integoation

ERP /
Extended ERP

DSSs

MIS DSS

TPS

Fig 10 The Two Dimensional Framework of Intelligence and Integration Intelligence

Data Information Knowledge Wisdom

24
6.3 The positioning of integrated DSSs and Business Intelligence(BI)

6.3.1 Integrated DSSs

Continuing our prior discussion on DSS and data warehouse, we now try to position
DSSs and BI in the framework.

To fulfill the commitment of traditional DSS with respect to the support of all
structured, semi-structured, and unstructured decision making at all the three levels of
management Over the years, various decision-support applications –EIS, GDSS, and
online analytical processing(OLAP), etc., have emerged and expanded the original
concept of DSS(Watson & Wixom, 2007). In addition, Artificial intelligence(AI)
techniques have been applied to decision support and there systems are normally called
intelligent DSS. Knowledge-based decision support systems have used techniques from
artificial intelligence and expert systems to provide smarter support for the decision-
maker and began evolving into the concept of organizational knowledge
management(Shim, et al., 2002; Paradice & Courtney, 1989) This shows the proofs of
evolutionary advances of individual stand-alone DSSs on the intelligence dimension
(Zhang, 2007, 2010).

Similar to traditional MIS, “DSS is not a homogenous field”(Arnott & Pervan,

2005). However, different from MIS concept which was originally an umbrella, or
collective term, a DSS has been evolving into a collective concept DSSs. In terms of
contemporary professional practice, DSSs can be organized into five DSS categories,
including: communication driven, data driven, document driven, knowledge driven, and
model driven decision support systems(Turban, et al, 2004).

The same to MIS, the DSS also need to gathering intelligence through integration.
As a long standing issue, integration has been discussed in early works, such as Turban
and Watkins’(1986). While the importance of integration of DSS has been recognized
after the traditional problem solving DSS experienced some challenges of interesting
declining in the 1990s (Claver, et al, 2000), and the criticism of ”stand-alone” DSS and
the need for closely coupled DSS has been noticed, the different types of integration
between various DSS systems have been widely discussed and new concepts,
frameworks, architectures, and applications for DSS integration have been introduced
since late 1990s(Marakas, 1999; Nemati, et al, 2002; Bolloju, 2002; Mladenic, et al,
2003).

In the point of view of the author of this contribution, the collective concept DSSs,
could also be termed as “integrated systems” (Zhang, 2009, 2010). The integrated DSSs
represent the integration of different decision-making information systems with an
essence of function integration, and intelligence increases through the integration, which
is an on going process along the intelligence and integration dimensions in the
framework (Zhang, 2007, 2010). Liu et al(2010) addressed the integration for decision
support systems from multiple perspectives and held that integrated DSSs can provide

25
improved support for decision makers to make more rational decisions

6.3.2 Business Intelligence

Originally coined by Gartner Group in the mid-1990s as a collective term for data
analysis tools, mainly including data warehouse, data mining and OLAP (Gartner, 1990),
BI has its roots in the MIS reporting systems of the 1970s (Turban, et al, 2007; Barrs &
Kemper, 2008) and uses transaction data; However, “as data passes from the operational
environment to the data warehouse environment, it must be integrated” (Inmon, 2002).
Data warehouse is a repository for integrated data. “BI converts data into useful
information and, through human analysis, into knowledge.”(Nagash, 2004) BI is a data-
driven knowledge-based decision support system.

At the same time, BI is “a contemporary term for EIS” (Arnott & Pervan, 2005). It
is even more frequently used than DSS and has practically replaced EIS (Carlsson &
Turban, 2002). Furthermore, BI assists in strategic and operational decision
making(Negash, 2004). As a matter of fact, BI is now “commonly understood to
encompass all components of an integrated management support infrastructure”(Barrs &
Kemper, 2008), which means it is able to support all decision making activities.
Successfully supporting managerial decision-making is critically dependent upon the
availability of integrated, high quality information organized and presented in a timely
and easily understood manner. Data warehouse, or BI, “have infrastructure, and thus
have emerged to meet this need”(March & Hevner, 2007).

Through the above detail analysis of MIS evolution on the integration and
intelligence dimension we now offer the overall picture of the evolutionary process in
Figure 11, which is actually a consolidation, with some minor modification, of the
framework proposed by Zhang (2007, 2010).

6. 4 The limitations of the framework

In Section 5.2.3, a five-layer framework of integration was introduced. Different

types of integration of EDPs, MIS, DSS, ERP and BI systems at the five levels were also
discussed by Zhang(2007, 2008, 2010). In addition, Liu et al (2010) detailed the idea of
Integrated DSS with an attempt to address the integration issue for decision support
systems from multiple perspectives including data and information integration, model
integration, process integration, service integration and presentation integration.
However details of these types of integration can’t be shown in the current framework.

7. The Future of MISs

In the 21st century, the Internet, the Web, and telecommunication technology can be
expected to result in organizational environments that will be increasingly more global,
and connected, which will be setting tremendous impact on every aspect of IT sector and
making MISs becoming more and more Internet enabled and inter-organizational. Major
business applications are now delivered online as Internet service rather than just boxed
software systems (Laudon & Laudon, 2012), to make them more flexible, and capable of

26
integration with other systems. Meanwhile, the emerging IT approaches and solutions,
such as SOA and cloud computing, have been further facilitating the enterprise systems’
implementation.
Integoation

ERP / BI
Extended ERP

Interated
DSSs

MIS DSS

TPS

Figure 11：The Evolution of MISs in the Intelligence-Integration Framework

Intelligence
Data Information Knowledge Wisdom

The SOA’s “loose-coupling principle” for enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise

applications( Arsanjani, 2002), combined with the web services’ powerful
implementation technology for realizing the SOA promise of maximum service sharing,
reuse, and interoperability(Kreger, et al, 2003), makes it an emerging approach that
addresses the requirements of loosely coupled, standards-based, and protocol
independent distributed computing (Papazoglou, et al, 2007). Cloud Computing has been
envisioned as the next-generation architecture of enterprise. Staying with Software as a
Service (SaaS) , which has also been long referred in such architecture as SOA, it moves
the application software and databases to the centralized large data centers(Wang, et al,
2009), thus give more application providers the choice of deploying their product as
SaaS without provisioning a datacenter (Armbrust, et al, 2009). As a result, consumers
will be easier to access applications and data from a “cloud” anywhere in the world “on
demand.”( Buyya, et al, 2008; Buyya, et al, 2009) . Moving beyond the just- “in-house
implementations”(Russell, 2010), organizations are on their way to seek best practices as
well as develop technology roadmaps for integrating the cloud applications with their in-

27
house applications, or dividing the applications between in-house and on the
cloud(Marston et al, 2011).

7.1 The Future of ERP/Extended ERP:

On the integration dimension:

The ERP/Extended ERP will function as both the systems-on -promise and the
systems-on- demand, which represents the two trends in ERP/Extended ERP’s evolution
along the integration dimension. In practice, enterprise application vendors are not only
“delivering enterprise solutions, enterprise suites, or e-business suites, be created to make
the CRM, SCM and ERP systems to work together” but also “utilize Web service and
SOA to make enterprise applications easier to implement “(Laudon & Laudon, 2012)

Research by literature review in ERP areas has showed that, with a shift from theory
to implementation (Al-Mashari, 2002), the number of publications on the implementation
of ERP was the greatest in the time span of both 1997 to 2000 and 2000 to 2006 either as
a phrase of ERP lifecycle (Esteves & Pastor, 2001) or one of the major theme in the
broad background of multi-disciplinary review of ERP research (Moon, 2007). In
practice, many large corporations were in the process of undertaking the project on the
implementation of packaged enterprise systems, namely, the ERP systems, since mid
1990s (Davenport, 2004). However it was also revealed that the implementing ERP
systems became a new myth, or actually new challenge/crisis/conflict MISs faces at that
time(Mabert et al, 2001; Helo et al, 2008), as it is such “a complex, lengthy and
expensive process” with multiple factors involved (Moon, 2007; Botta-Genoulaz, et al,
2005).

To address the conflict, ERPs/Extended ERPs are also provided as “systems-on-

demand” (Koslowski & Str¨uker, 2011). Global leaders in business software solutions,
such as Epicor Software Corporation , announced their cloud computing solutions
(Epicor Software Cooperation, 2011), which displayed the production features including
end-to-end on-demand and the simplicity of SaaS ERP; while researchers also discussed
the potentials of integrating ERP systems into cloud computing (Elragala and
Haddarab, 2012).

On the intelligence dimension:

For a long time, ERPs/Extended ERPs have merely focused on and been succeeded
in supporting the key business processes and functions in a standardized way and through
integration. However, they need to pay great attention to support the decision making
process as that has been actually also the expectation for ERP systems soon after the
systems came into being(Davenport, 1998; Li, 1999 ).
ERP gains intelligence through integration. There is an increased recognition that
business intelligence, which integrated many of the EIS, DSS, and expert systems
concepts, is becoming a necessary component in the second generation of enterprise
systems, such as ERP, as well as in extremely integrated enterprise systems that include

28
CRM and e-commence components (Turban, et al, 2002). The ERP/BI integration, or
combinations, has been applied not only to financial decisions, but also marketing, HR
and various areas of manufacturing (Turban, et al, 2011). In terms of the intelligence
enhancement of ERP systems, integrating the crowd of Decision 2.0 into ERPs to
facilitate the decision making process is one of the future targets ( Elragala &
Haddarab, 2012).

7.2 The future of BI

Serving as a data-driven decision support systems, BI are featured with tight
integration for intelligence in decision making. As a collectively term that combines
architectures, tools, databases, analytical tools, applications, and methodologies
Raisinghani, 2004), BI have been involving those information systems including OLAP,
data and mining, DSS/ESS, data warehouse, CRM marketing, GIS, knowledge and
management(Negash, 2004) , and capable of doing support decision making EIS/ESS,
DSS, financial reporting, digital cockpits and dashboards, workflow, alerts and
notifications, predictive analytics, etc(Turban, et al, 2011) . The most sophisticated BI
products, which serve as on-promise systems, include most of these capabilities; others
specialize on only some them. There is a trend for using all-in-one-stop comprehensive
systems, such as Oracle BI Integrated System (Turban, et al., 2007; Oracle Corporation,
2010).

Similar to the situation of ERP, BIs, as systems-on-premise, have some limitations

in terms of implementation, such as high implementation fees, and long implementation
periods. Companies are turning to the on demand BI model based on cloud computing
(Turban, et al, 2011). Solutions called Cloud BI or Software as a Services BI or BI
services on demand are increasingly popular (Mircea et al, 2011). Integration of a Cloud
BI solution has special interest for organizations that desire to improve agility while at
the same time reducing IT costs and exploiting the benefits of Cloud Computing (Bowen,
2009; Mircea et al, 2011), or for the development of Next-era BI(Henschen, 2008;
Mircea, 2008), which is expected to be proactive, pervasive, and performance-oriented.

7.3 The future of DSSs

On the intelligence dimension:

Trends in all the five categories of DSS are emerging, for example, data-driven DSS
continuously use faster, real-time access to larger, better integrated databases.
Knowledge-driven DSS are usually more sophisticated and comprehensive”(Helms,
2009) , which represents the development directions of well established but stand alone
DSS systems.

On the integration dimension:

With respect to the implementation , DSS is increasingly integrated with other
organizational systems such as ERP, CRM, or more specialized data warehouse.

29
 From general integration viewpoint, the future trends of DSS includes: generality
and extensibility of the integration approaches and processes implemented in an
Integrated DSS; flexibility versus reliability, i.e. the tradeoffs between loose integration
and tight integration of data and models; and from IDSS to a generic integrated decision
support environment(Liu, 2010).

8 Conclusion

To conclude this contribution, the author would highlight the evolutionary processes
of MISs as the following:
(1) The traditional MIS was fragmented but these “fragmented” are not disjointed.
With the attempt to meet the expectation/requirement of “a total integrated
management information system”, traditional MIS has broken down into various
specialized IS systems. They have distinguished advantages to meet different business
management requirements, and strong capacity to perform the same functions as MIS
with greater specialty, and integration. In addition, they have been advancing
independently while still being interconnected in their evolutionary process by adding
intelligence to their ancestor systems or by integrating with other systems or system
components.
(2) The core parts of MIS or MIS, which are depicted by the MIS Pyramid, remain
stable while the whole systems dramatically expanding.
The MIS Pyramid remains unchanged in the evolutionary processes of MISs
regardless of the great diversity and complexity MISs has developed in the past decade.
The introduction of the two dimensions, intelligence and integration, has transformed the
Pyramid, and led to a framework to accommodate the dynamic evolutionary
development of MISs.
(3) Systems-on- promise can also been implemented as systems- on-demand in the
digital environment.
Co-existing with the boxed “on-promise” systems, such as ERPs/Extended ERPs,
DSSs, or BI, there are also some unboxed, “on-demand” systems which are “loosely
integrated”, or “loosely coupled” from different systems or system components. The
integration and coupling increases the flexibility and functionality and also facilitates
intelligence adding to these “on promise” systems. While conceptual modeled and
graphically presented in the framework, they will come out as dynamically grayed-in and
grayed-out “small packages” which are positioned in the framework according to the
intelligence and integration levels they are able to achieve.

References:

Ackoff, R. L. (1967). Management misinformation systems. Management Science, 14(4),

Application Series(Dec. 1967), B147-B156.

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