Managing Computers in Large Organizations

Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html
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MANAGING MICROCOMPUTERS AND END-USER COMPUTING SOME CRITICAL
ISSUES
Creative leaps of imagination are not inductive. They do not derive
logically from the data. But creativity does not occur in an environment devoid
of data either. The process of studying data seems to facilitate innovative
thinking. Since the end user often cannot predict which data are relevant, access
is needed to a variety of files with data about the environment, the history and
current status of operations, policies and rules, and resource availability. The
end user may be performing any of a number of management analysis tasks:
looking for exceptions, for opportunities, for measures of current status and
progress, for alternatives, or for estimates of the consequences of adopting an
alternative. An innovative insight may come at any point during any of these
studies.
There are of course costs and risks in providing computer resources to
many end users. Is the cost worth the benefits from improved decisions? I think
the benefits significantly outweigh the risks and costs. This judgment is based
on two beliefs: first, that distributed creativity is valuable and is facilitated by
end-user computing, and second, that our culture is particularly able to be
creative if given the right tools.
Especially in the United States, we learn from childhood to do things
ourselves. At great national expense we prefer automobiles to mass transit so
that we can go where we want when we want. We have even learned how to
drive trucks to move our belongings ourselves rather than use a trucking
service. The ultimate demonstration of distributed creativity in our culture is the
prevalence of entrepreneurs and the proliferation of small enterprises.
With this cultural heritage it is not surprising that managers and analysts
want to handle their own decision support and the computing that goes with it.
The rise of personal computing was predictable given our culture of individual
initiative, even if most data processing professionals, blinded by their own
expertise, did not forecast it.
But a desire to do things on one's own is not enough. You can't rent a driveit-yourself
truck if the only trucks available are 18-wheelers requiring special
training and hard work to drive. And you won't rent a truck if the closest rental
office is several hundred miles away.
Until a couple of years ago computers were like 18-wheelers—
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