Information Technology: The Journey

Introduction

Not just a bandwagon? The evolution of information technology and globalisation has brought about new meaning to business operations, communications, and cultural dynamics. Bricks and mortar (B & M) no longer define the way business is constructed in the globalised economy and world. Ubiquitous borderlessness now prevail in the current world’s economy and culture. While information technology emerged and evolved as a way of enhancing administrative duties in recent times, its potential implementations and their organisational structures, and likewise, the daily lives of individuals. IT has paved the way and serves as the bedrock in many ways for the deployment and the implementations of infrastructures. This chapter drives the reader through a brief history on information technology and deployment of information technology, laying the groundwork for the movement into the implementations of electronic commerce broadened strategically spanning just about all aspects of the fabrics of organisations and institutions and lives of individuals. Sustainability markets in this vein for organisations and institutions requires the capability to reconcile dynamical nature of information technology and its essence in their business operations. Sections and subtopics tackled in this chapter include:

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  The Motivation: This section delineates the role of information technology has impacted the day to day operations at business organisations and institutions or electronic business at institutions and organisations. Conspicuous changes in computers range from user friendliness with the use of the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) through monochrome screens to coloured screens, reduced size and clickableness.

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  Information Technology Defined: This section presents a succinct definition of information technology as presented in this book.

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  A Brief Look at Its Timeline: In this section, readers are driven through the timeline of information technology and its evolvement throughout the decades.

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  A Stimulant on Information Technology: This section covers the information technology evolution and how this process has helped catalyse the astronomical surge in the demand and the deployment of enterprise electronic commerce solutions in almost all facets of business operations at organisations and institutions. Ensuing from the edge for competiveness in the realm of business and market, organisations and institutions have sought ways to improve efficacy and efficiency in the way they do business, an endeavour that has called for effective leadership and management (Bass, 1985; Chemers, 1995; Cherian, 1999; Chemers, Fidler, & Mahar, 1977; Djoleto, 2011a, 2011b; Dubin, 1959; Fiedler & Mahar, 1979; Johnson, 2001; Kopp, 2000; Maccoby, 2000; Matlay & Addis, 2003; Northouse, 2004; Senge, 1990; Settoon & Wyld, 2004; Sinha, 1995). Given that information technology with its infrastructure lends itself to the form of virtuality needed in this business dynamic, several business models have evolved in this vein.

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  Some Enterprise Electronic Commerce Implementations: Various cases of eCommerce deployments are presented in this section. The different electronic commerce models will be examined to determine their impacts on the administrative hierarchy and organisational leadership at historically black colleges and universities.

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  Summary: The summary section encapsulates the essence of this chapter.

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  Key Terms and Definitions: Some of the key words together with their definitions are presented under this section.