Information systems in a management structure (Tilburg Studies in Economics)

Information technique as a profession is still so young, that few opinions have settled. The influence of the new possibilities in infor­ mation technique on the functioning of organisations is so little under­ stood, that important questions like: what is the potential of a com­ puter in the firm, will management ultimately be replaced by one man-with-a-keyboard, remain unanswered. Many people are convinced that the impact of computers on the way we manage our enterprises will be enormous, but they grope in the dark for qualitative and quantitative measures to describe it. Naturally, at this early point in the development, the present appli­ cations of the computer appear incidental and offer no basis for a quest into its potential. Moreover, the present descriptions of management structures preclude an exact study of these structures, let alone a quantitative treatment of any influence upon it. In this study a number of exact concepts is developed to describe the typical grouped tasks as they occur in an organisation. These con­ cepts are characterised by the fact, that the activity of management units can be described comprehensively in terms of data processing. After all, practically everything we do is data processing of some sort. The picture of a management structure as it can be constructed with these concepts is, ignoring the typically human elements like motivation and inspiration, rather dull but it lends itself quite well for conclusions about computer application.