ABSTRACT
A system is often understood to be a routine or regular way of working. One can have a sys-tem for betting on a horse race, or a filing system for storing and retrieving documents. These systems can be seen as models providing templates for action in the world. In this chapter, we will first introduce the general topic of systems, and identify a few of the key characteristics all systems share. Then the main focus of the chapter follows, which is the introduction of what is formally meant by an information system, and a discussion of how information systems are used to control the way decisions are made.
