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Areas Covered
•
Introduction to
Organization and
•
Role of Information in
Organization, Management & Strategy
What is Organization?
Basically, an organization is group of people organized to
accomplish an overall goal. Organizations can
range in size from two people to hundreds of thousands -- some
people might argue that organizations are
even larger. Organizations have an overall goal (or mission)
which is usually subdivided into various other
goals (often called strategic goals) that, in total, will
achieve the overall goal of the organization.
A structure through which individuals cooperate systematically
to conduct business. It is a collection of
people working under predefined rules and regulations to obtain
a set of objectives. It is a stable formal
social structure. It takes resources from the environment and
processes them to produce outputs.
"Organization" is understood as planned, coordinated and
purposeful action of human beings in order to
construct or compile a common tangible or intangible product or
service. This action is usually framed
by formal membership and form (institutional rules).
Organization is a permanent arrangement of
elements. These elements and their actions are determined by
rules so that a certain task can be fulfilled
through a system of coordinated division of labour.
An organization is defined by the elements that are part of it
(who belongs to the organization and who
does not?), its communication (which elements communicate and
how do they communicate?), and its
rules of action compared to outside events (what causes an
organization to act as a collective actor?).
By coordinated and planned cooperation of the elements, the
organization is able to solve tasks that lie
beyond the abilities of the single elements. The price paid by
the elements is the limitation of the degrees
of freedom of the elements.
2.1 Need for Organization
As the volume of business expands, the need for disciplined
approach to managing operations is required.
This results in formulation of organizational structures. The
organizational structures are formulated in
order to efficiently manage the business operations. This makes
the structures a relative term to explain and
define. Organizations have the freedom to chose / evolve the
structures which best fits the management
needs.
An organization’s primary aim is to achieve the objective that
it lays down for itself and in pursuance of
which various actions are undertaken. Such objective could be to
generate profits or specific socioeconomic
cultural objectives. What ever the objectives are, these
activities interrelate and their occurrence
generate a series of events which helps organization achieve its
goal. The regular and timely recording of
information is critical to the proper management of business
operations.
2.2 Data vs. Information
Data represents facts of any kind. In the process of recording
important particulars of any event, it is the
discretion of the management, what should be recorded and how it
should be presented. However when
this data is processed or reformatted, it becomes information.
Information is a subset of data which adds
to the knowledge.
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Information should be relevant so that it is valuable for the
recipient. Although the processed form of
information is more valuable than the raw form of data, still
all information is not of value for every one.
Distributing common information to every one may result in waste
of time and confusion. Irrelevant
information has no value.
2.3 Information Quality Checklist
The information can also be ranked in accordance with the
qualities it has in it. The experts have devised
certain criteria to evaluate the quality of information. These
are stated below:
1. Is it clear who has written the information?
2. Who is the author? Is it an organization or an individual
person? Is there a way to contact
them?
3. Are the aims of the information clear?
4. What are the aims of the information? What is it for? Who is
it for?
Does the information achieve its aims?
5. Does the information do what it says it will?
Is the information relevant to me?
List five things to find out from the information.
o
.......................................................................................
o
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o
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o
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o
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1.
Can the information be
checked?
Is the author qualified to write the information? Has anyone
else said the same things
anywhere else? Is there any way of checking this out? If the
information is new,
is there any proof?
2.
When was the
information produced?
Is it up to date? Can you check to see if the information is up
to date?
3.
Is the information
biased in any way?
Has the information got a particular reason for wanting you to
think in a particular way?
Is it a balanced view or does it only give one opinion?
4.
Does the information
tell you about choices open to you?
Does the information give you advice? Does it tell you about
other ideas?
2.4 Organization & Information Requirements
Organizations have various attributes which distinguish them
from each other. No two organizations are
similar in all respects. There have to have certain distinctive
lines keeping them unique from each other.
Information requirements keep varying in accordance with
•
Size of organization
•
Its structure
•
The Culture it follows
•
Decision Making
Structures
•
Interested parties both
internal and external
An organization should consider the above mentioned requirements
while devising a system which
tailors for specific information needs. |
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