Enterprise information systems: Two case studies

Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) provide a platform that enables small organizations and distant collections of organizations to better integrate and coordinate their operations. We provide a theory of organizations and review two case studies beginning to use EIS-type architectures that form common information infrastructures to be more responsive, flexible and agile first for a system of medical organizations and second for a small college. The system of organizations is a distributed collection of military medical department research centers (MDRC) whose mission is to train physicians how to conduct and publish research; and the small college is providing a liberal arts education (Future College). Both MDRC and Future College (pseudonyms) are reorganizing their operations. We review theory for our approach, the two case studies, field evidence, computational models, and future prospects.