Zusammenfassung der Ressource
INFO3 - Topic 2 -
Information and Systems
- Information needs
in organisations
- Different
organisations have
different
information needs
- commercial organisations:
- good or services bought and sold to make
a profit. Examples of commercial
companies incluse retailers, wholesalers,
banks, insurance companies etc.
- Mainly driven by the need to make profit
- Industrial organisations:
- to manufacture products products or
process raw materials or be involved in
construction. The main thing here is that
theyall produce a product or material that
can be sold to make a profit
- examples of industrial companies are car
manufacturers, house builders, chemical
manuifacturers and quarries
- Public service organisations:
- To provide goods and services from public
funds. Producing a profit is not an aim of these
companies although in some cases taxes are
colected which are then used for purposes such
as building roads, schools, hospitals etc.
- examples of these organisations are HMRC,
hospitals, schools, police service, armed
forces, etc.
- The scale of
organisations
- small
- generally informal structures
- Usually confined to a single site
- between 1-50 employeed
- medium
- between 50-500 employees
- Uses informal structure
- Uses WANs and LANs
- large
- 500 or more employees
- can involve lots of seperate
companies/organisations
- examples include banks, car
manufacturers, large retail retail
multiples, etc
- Nature and management style
- autocratic
- clear authority, all decisions are made by senior managers, very
little decision making is made lower down + workers are always
told what to do => they do not work on their own initiative.
information tends to flow from the top of the company
downwards BUT staff are demotivated as they don't feel
involved in the organisation
- paternalistic
- senior managers have the authority but
decisions tend to be made in the
employees interests rather than the
businesses interests. Managementtend to
explain their decisions to emplyees
- democratic
- employees take part in the decision
making process so that nobody can
complain if the decisions are bad. This
is helpful as different people in the
organisationf will see the project from a
different perspective BUT this means
the process will be slowed down
- laissez-faire
- least formal and staff are expected to manage
their own areas, ALL staff are at the same level,
this is good for partnership organisations such
as solicitors and lawyers as there is very little
communication between staff
- The information needs of different levels of tasks
- strategic
- strategic tasks are completed by staff at the top of the company
or organisation (ie managers and chief executives). these tasks
would include making decision on the overall direction of the
company
- examples of strategic tasks would be: decisions regarding
expansion into new markets, decisions about the introduction of new
products and services
- tactical
- completed by managers and they look at how to achieve the
objectives that the directors and chief executives set. they also
make decisions using operational information (for example, if a
product is not seeling well they need to decide what to do with it
- operational tasks
- routine day to day tasks that keep the business
functioning. The majority of operational tasks deal with the
transactions that take place when running an organisation
- for example, operational tasks
would include, paying wages,
ordering stock, paying for stock etc.