MIS STRUCTURE BASED ON MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY

MIS provides useful information to the different levels of management for discharging their function more effectively and efficiently. In order to understand design of suitable management information system.
This means that the structure of management information can be expressed in terms of different levels of management activity. There are three important levels of management namely strategic management, management control or tactical management and operational management. These levels of management activity are discussed below.

Strategic Management
The first area of management is strategic planning level or top level management. Top level management consists of board of directors and other chief executives. They are ranking officers of the organization. Top level management develops over all organizational goals, strategies, policies and objectives through long range strategic planning. They integrate the functions of entire organization.
Strategic managers make decisions that affect the entire organization. Their decisions may also leave a long term impact in the organization. Here the decision maker develops objectives and allocates resources to attain these objectives. Decisions of this type are made over a long period of time and usually involve huge investments. Developing and introducing a new product in the market, the opening of branches abroad, mergers or acquisition etc. is some of the examples for strategic decisions.

Management Control or Tactical Management
Management control level or middle level management decisions involve financial or [personal consideration. They make wide ranging decisions for their subordinates on the basis of general guide lines received from the top level management. They develop medium range plans and defining objectives of their departments. These managers are responsible for finding the best operational measures to accomplish the strategic decisions set by the top level management.
They make plans and compare the actual performance with standards. Then they determine variances if any and take remedial measures to avoid them in future. For example if the top level managers to make decisions regarding the acquisition of hardware, software and imparting training to staff under him.

Operational Management
Operational management or lower level management deals with routine activities. They make short term plans to carry out day to day activities more effectively and efficiently. They are in charge of small group or subordinates. These managers’ implements policies handed over to them by their superiors. With in these policies, they make decisions that affect their small units for a short period .preparation of pay roll and inventory management are examples of operational control level decisions.

Management level and Information requirement
The information requirement of management depends on the different levels of management. The model of ‘managerial pyramid’ was popularized by Robert N. Anthony. He contributed new levels of management on the basis of planning level, management control level and operational control level are these three revised levels of management.
It true that the top level managers spend more time on strategic decisions than supervisors in the bottom level of management. While top managers spend very little time, operational supervisors spend more time to take operational decisions. The type of information required by managers is directly related to the level of management and structure of decision situation. The operational management level requires regular detailed reports to manage the day to day affaires of business.
Three levels of management activity can be differentiated on the basis of the planning aspects for each level. Different management activities functions will have different information characteristics. The following table provides different information characteristics by different level of management. It is based on the work of G. Anthony Gory and Michael Scott Morton in the early 1970’s.

*Information System for operational management
The responsibility of operational level management is to supervise operational activities. Operational control makes use of pre-established procedures and decision rules. A large percentage of decisions are programmable. The procedures to follow are quite stable. They supervise the day to day activities.
The informational source of operational control is mainly come from internal data generated from transactions.

* Informational system for tactical management
Management control information is required by managers of departments, profit centers etc to measure performance, decide control actions,
Formulate new decision rules to be applied by operational personnel. They require only information in summary form
Management control makes use of both internal &external data.

*Information system for strategic management
The purpose of strategic planning is to formulate strategies to achieve organization goals. They make long term plans. Strategic planning decisions occur only once in a while. Strategic planning requires summarized data from a variety of source. They depend upon external data such as competitor’s policy, market condition, government policies etc. or decision making.

Management information system cannot be applied effectively at the strategic planning level. The success of the strategic decisions depends on the skills, experience and the judgment ability of human decision makers in the interpreting data and information. Hence decisions at the strategic level are unstructured and non programmed. 


Therefore it is concluded that many of the changes in the information needs can be attributed to the degree of decision structure at each level will be more structured , those at the management control level are semi-structured and those at the strategic level are more unstructured. Therefore the information system should be designed to meet the information requirements of managers at all levels.

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3 Comments

Unknown said…
Excellent notes with simple language
Unknown said…
Excellent notes with simple language