MIS is an integrated information system, which is used to provide
management with needed information on a regular basis .

The term system in MIS implies ORDER, ARRANGEMENT, and
PURPOSE.

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

MIS is an integrated information system, which is used to provide
management with needed information on a regular basis .

The term system in MIS implies ORDER, ARRANGEMENT, and
PURPOSE.

The information can be used for various purposes,

-strategic planning
-delivering increased productivity
-reducing service cycles
-reducing product development cycles
-reducing marketing life cycles
-increasing the understanding of customers' needs
-facilitating business and process re-engineering.

MIS can also be used across the organization as an information
utility to

-support policy making
-meet regulatory and legislative requirements
-support research and development
-support consistent and rapid decision making
-enable effective and efficient utilization of resources
-provide evidence of business transactions
-identify and manage risks
-evaluate and document quality, performance and achievements.

MAKING INFORMATION AVAILABLE
The availability of information is fundamental to the decision making
process. Decisions are made within the organization at
-STRATEGIC
-OPERATIONAL
-PROGRAMMES
-ACTIVITY LEVEL.

The information needs and decision making activities of the
various levels of management

SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Strategic business direction

-information for strategically positioning the organization
-competitive analysis and performance evaluation,
-strategic planning and policy,
-external factors that influence the direction
etc

MID LEVEL MANAGEMENT
Organizational and operational functions

-information for coordination of work units
-information for delivery programmes
-evaluation of resources usage
-budget control
-problem solving
-operational planning
etc


MID LEVEL MANAGEMENT
Programme management within units

-information for implementing programmes
-information for managing programmes
-management of resources usage
-project scheduling
-problem solving
-operational planning
etc




LINE MANAGEMENT
Activity management

-information for routine decision making
-information for problem solving
-information for service delivery
etc.

MANAGEMENT SUPPORT SYSTEMS

The management oriented support systems provide support to various levels of management.

Executive Information Systems allow executives to see where a problem or opportunity exists.

Decision Support Systems are used by mid-level management to support the solution of problems that require judgement by the problem solver.

Line Managers use Management Reporting Systems for routine operational information.

FUNCTIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

These include

-Accounting Information Systems

-Marketing Information Systems

-Enterprise Information Systems

-Decision Support Information Systems

-Executive Information Systems

-Quality Management Information Systems

-Manufacturing Information Systems

-Financial Information Systems

-Human resource Information Systems

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-WHAT IS THE OBJECTIVE OF THE MANAGEMENT IN USING MIS

THE OBJECTIVE IS TO PROVIDE THE MANAGEMENT, A RANGE OF
Business Intelligence
Business Performance Management
Business rules
Data Mining
Predictive analytics
Purchase order request
Enterprise Architecture
Information technology management
Knowledge Base
Online analytical processing
ETC ETC
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-WHAT ARE THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE MANAGEMENT OF MIS

The major EXPECTATIONS of MIS are to:
reach an understanding of the relevant processes on the basis of the available historic information. This element forms the basis for the development of models, required for forecasting and simulation.
provide information on the current situation, especially for early warning purposes, for instance related to issues impacting on business, resources or business status.
forecast changes and impacts, either natural or man-made, as an element in vulnerability assessments.
forecast the consequences of policy decisions and measures before they are implemented in reality. This implies evaluating options for several given scenarios based on the possible results and predicted consequences, and selecting the most acceptable alternative.
Conceptual frameworks used to provide context to explanations of IS usage in organizations

Since the early 1970s, several attempts have been made to categorize IS and to produce taxonomies of IS. Perhaps the first one was made by Gorry and
Scott Morton . They used a two dimensions framework to classify IS:
(i) managerial level supported by the IS - according to Anthony’s framework for managerial activities ;
(ii) (ii) type of problem addressed/decision to be made –
whether structured, semi-structured or non-structured.

Managerial activities
As a consequence Anthony’s framework for managerial activities became a very popular conceptual framework to support explanations of IS use.
Dated from mid 1960’s Anthony’s three levels of managerial activities framework can be associated with the bureaucratic model of organizations that
resulted from the industrial era. It might be misleading in the modern situation of flexible organizations acting in a global market with more educated employees
that demand autonomy and empowerment. So, alternative and more sophisticated models of managerial activities were also used to illustrate IS usage in modern
organizations.

Viable System Model (VSM)
VSM accounts for two important aspects:
it differentiates among five managerial functions that are considered necessary to guarantee autonomy (coordination, control, audit, intelligence, and policy
making) and suggests a recursive structure that is essential to assure organizations’ viability. Besides accommodating explanations similar to those
achieved with Anthony’s framework, the VSM framework also provides the basis to explain the necessity/utility of several levels of information provision provided
nowadays through the use of data warehousing and OLAP technology .

Decision-making
When used to support managerial activities, IS are somewhat related to decision making. Therefore, decisions and the decision making process are also a
popular dimension in IS taxonomies.

Communication
With the advent of local area networks, another aspect become important – communication. Computers started to be used to support activities that involve
communication between several people (e.g., groupware systems). Therefore several features related to the communication process were, in some way,
included in taxonomies.

Business functions, processes and domains
Some IS classifications also focus on organizational activities although they don’t address the Anthony’s distinction of managerial activities types. It is
quite common to classify IS according to the functional area they are used in.

New perspectives on IS: dealing with knowledge
In recent years it became quite popular to mention that IS deal with knowledge. This isn’t particularly new. The first references to computer based systems that deal with knowledge are quite old and have their roots in artificial
intelligence applications. Expert systems and their integrating knowledge bases
are as old. It is also easy to accept that the models bases that integrate decision support systems deal with some form of knowledge as well.
And decision support systems are even older than expert systems.
However, the increasing frequency of such mentions to knowledge suggest a change in discourse and might also indicate that we are living a paradigm shift in the way we perceive IS in organizations.
In our view, knowledge manipulation by IS really became an issue. This can be explained as resulting from a combination of several factors that allowed
that the focus of computer use in organizations shifted from just dealing with information to interfering with human capabilities for action. Such factors include
the following:
Widespread use of IS in organizations such as data mining, workflow management systems, e-groups, several communication services available upon the internet that go well beyond the long-standing processing of •
information according to previously known rules or algorithms;
New organizational and social practices enabled by those computer based systems (IT in general) such as: knowledge discovery in databases; workflow •
management; just-in-time; supply chain management; electronic commerce; customer relationship management; communities of practice; knowledge
management;
Dissemination of personal computers and mobile computing and communication devices and their interconnection through the internet. •
Cognition systems
Acknowledging that IS deal with knowledge opens up a whole new perspective for looking at IS in organizations: organizations as cognition systems,
i.e., systems that exhibit cognition features similar to those that can be found in humans.
In fact, organizations can be viewed as collective enterprises where purposeful action is carried out. This action can correspond either to operational
action (action to produce the results it is supposed to produce according to its purpose) or to managerial action (action to guarantee the organization’s survival
and well being). Action demands acting capabilities that, for the cases of intellectual/mental/cognitive action, can be presented as composed by knowledge
and intelligence. Knowledge corresponds to images of the internal and external state of affairs, models of the dynamics of the world and other mental images
created based on the others forms of knowledge.

Intelligence might include capacities such as to perceive, to memorize, to reason, to imagine, to solve
problems, to plan a desired future.

Types of knowledge
It is possible to use those concepts to look at what IS do in organizations.
In what concerns knowledge, we can use a classification of “cognitions” to distinguish among different types of knowledge:
perceptual, conceptual and behavioral.

Perceptual knowledge can be associated to
whatever can be known through perceptual mechanisms.



Conceptual knowledge
can be associated to the results of reasoning upon perceptual knowledge and conceptual knowledge.

Behavioral knowledge corresponds to knowing how to do
something.

Manipulation of knowledge representations by IS
Representations of any of those types of knowledge are dealt with by IS.

For instance, what we normally call data processing systems deal with representations of perceptual knowledge (e.g., records of what exists in a
warehouse, what is being sold, the customers’ names and addresses, etc.). They use forms of deductive reasoning to produce some result that is necessary in an
organization’s value chain. Management information systems aren’t very different. They also apply forms of deductive reasoning upon representations of
perceptual knowledge. However, the aim of these IS is to produce some form of conceptual knowledge such as management indicators. The decision models of
decision support systems correspond to conceptual knowledge.

The role of decision support systems is to support deductive reasoning using those models to
produce alternative scenarios for a course of action. These scenarios are a form of conceptual knowledge as well as they result from reasoning. Workflow
management systems incorporate descriptions of what to do – representations of behavioral knowledge – to coordinate action in organizations. Data mining
systems carry out inductive reasoning upon perceptual knowledge to produce conceptual knowledge such as customers’ patterns of behavior.

The role played by any type of IS can be re-interpreted according to the cognition system conceptual framework outlined above. In certain cases computers can be viewed as amplifiers of human cognitive capabilities,
enhancing human capacity for perceiving, memorizing, reasoning, communicating. In other cases IS became autonomous elements of the cognition mechanisms of an organization (including elements that support communication and interaction among the other elements). They interact with other IS and with
humans (directly or through their cognitive amplifiers) to constitute a collective organizational mind.

Classification for the various components (topics, species or subsystems) of planning and control systems and to suggest the characteristics of each component. According to Anthony these components or topics include the following:
Planning and Control Systems
Subsystem Definition
Management Control "...the process of assuring that resources are obtained and used effectively and efficiently in the accomplishment of the organization's objectives."
Strategic Planning "...the process of deciding on changes in the objectives of the organization, in the resources that are to be used in attaining these objectives, and in the policies that are to govern the acquisition and use of these resources."
Technical Control "...the process of assuring the efficient acquisition and use of resources, with respect to activities for which the optimum relationship between outputs and resources can be approximately determined."
Anthony compares strategic planning and management control in a table reproduced below.
Category Strategic Planning Management Control
Person primarily involved Staff and top management Line and top management
Number of persons Small Large
Mental activity Creative; analytical Administrative; persuasive
Variables Complex; much judgment Less complex
Time period Tends to be long Tends to be short
Periodicity Irregular, no set schedule rhythmic; set timetable
Procedures Unstructured; each problem different Prescribed procedure, regularly followed
Focus Tends to focus on one aspect at a time All encompassing
Source of information Relies more on external and future Relies more on internal and historical
Product Intangible; precedent setting More tangible; action within precedent
Communication problem Relatively simple Crucial and difficult
Appraisal of soundness Extremely difficult Much less difficult
Anthony defines "managed costs" in making a distinction between