Management Information Systems

1. Charles Parker 2nd Edition Management Information Systems Chapter 4:Management & Decision Making Prepared By: HamadRaza (Lecturer GCUF)

2. Managerial Decision Making • Decision Making has been called the essence (core) of management because it is the most basic function that managers are paid to do. • Now we will discuss the main ingredients of decisions that is information.

3. Characteristics of Effective Information • Information is something that is perceived: Information refers to the data that have been processed by the human mind and therefore have been given some type of meaning. Perceptual & personality factors influence the manner in which data are encoded, processed & stored. Thus two people looking at the same set of data often focus on & perceive different things, perhaps reaching different conclusions.

4. Characteristics of Effective Information • Information reduces uncertainty about a situation: People tend to seek out information because certain facts may help to minimize the risk of making a wrong decision and increase the likelihood of making the right one.

5. Characteristics of Effective Information • The human mind processes information in chunks, taken from short term memory: Because people usually find it easier to draw from short term rather than long term or external memory when they are initiating an action, information is likely to have the greatest influence when key data are readily accessible in a person’s short term memory.

6. Characteristics of Effective Information • The rate at which people can process data into information is finite: If too many data are presented within a certain time frame, the result is information is overload. Since individual can typically only process chunks of data at a time, materials such as reports, graphs and tables should be formatted so that they do not overwhelm decision makers with more information than can be easily understood.