Friday, September 19, 2008

Information Acquisition and Information Use (Ch 3)

It seems to me that each manager usually wants to see a specific set of data in one or several reports. The data might be useful at first but then the business evolves and and the data provided does not always. Slowly the information looses its "informational usefulness". I agree with the authors when they point out that in some situations "processing information" does not automatically contribute to decisions. When the manager moves on, often the type of information requested still has to be provided to the new manager. But the new manager will also want a different set of data in addition to what was originally provided. Employees can end up wasting hours working on reports that are at best glanced at.
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1 comment:

Professor Cyborg said...

Bureaucracies seem to live for reports--reports that gather dust on a shelf and never get read. For Spring 2007 I received a student success grant to survey students with disabilities on SJSU's campus. This was a follow up to a similar study I did in 1994. I worked with a team of students on both projects. In May 2007 the students submitted their report. I put the report online and emailed the URL to administrators across campus. Not one person emailed me back. Finally, in Spring 2008, word about the report reached a few key people and I presented the findings to the council of deans--a year after the report was completed. Still, the report has had some impact. I received another student success grant for Spring 2008 to have student teams conduct workshops for faculty and students on communication and disability. I had 10 students for the project and they conducted 4 workshops. Sometimes with reports, the authors need to just keep talking about the findings. Eventually someone will listen.

September 20, 2008 at 12:11 PM

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