The Impact of Information Technologies on Organizations and Their Employees
The world is in the mist of the most radical and rapid transformation of commerce and society since the invention of the automobile. During the next few years, electronic markets will grow and begin operating over cheep, accessible public networks, the so-called electronic highway. Whole industries will be destroyed and new ones born. Productivity will leap and competitive advantage shift in the direction of small business. Thousands of jobs will become obsolete and disappear, and thousands of others will be created. The electronic frontier, like the frontiers that preceded it, is at once a realm of boundless opportunity and a harsh, brutal place.1
1Thomas Stewart, "Boom Time on the New Frontier," Fortune Special Issue, Making High Tech Work for
You, Autumn 1993, p. 153.
The technological basis of electronic commerce is simultaneously simple and complex. The simple part is that all images and sounds - a voice, a movie, a document, a tune, can be expressed in a digital code, streams of ones and zeros. Once digitized, they can be shipped electronically or stored in electronic memories and retrieved later.
The complex part lies in making the network easy to use, changing organizations to enable them to incorporate the network's benefits, developing the services it will make possible (examples - electronic shopping malls, world-wide yellow pages), and training and developing the people necessary to make the organizations function effectively within the electronic environment.
The rise of electronic networks is staggering. The market for networking between companies barely existed s few years ago; today it exceeds billions annually.
Most stunning of all of this has been the growth of the Internet, a loosely confederated network of networks, public and private. According to Vinton Cerf, president of the Internet Society. "Internet is growing faster than any other telecommunications system ever built, including the telephone network."
1Thomas Stewart, "Boom Time on the New Frontier," Fortune Special Issue, Making High Tech Work for
You, Autumn 1993, p. 153.
The technological basis of electronic commerce is simultaneously simple and complex. The simple part is that all images and sounds - a voice, a movie, a document, a tune, can be expressed in a digital code, streams of ones and zeros. Once digitized, they can be shipped electronically or stored in electronic memories and retrieved later.
The complex part lies in making the network easy to use, changing organizations to enable them to incorporate the network's benefits, developing the services it will make possible (examples - electronic shopping malls, world-wide yellow pages), and training and developing the people necessary to make the organizations function effectively within the electronic environment.
The rise of electronic networks is staggering. The market for networking between companies barely existed s few years ago; today it exceeds billions annually.
Most stunning of all of this has been the growth of the Internet, a loosely confederated network of networks, public and private. According to Vinton Cerf, president of the Internet Society. "Internet is growing faster than any other telecommunications system ever built, including the telephone network."