Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
or outdated, determines the quality of the entire
business. Business management uses
information
presenting important characteristics of the field
dealt with, and its own and co-workers' knowledge,
i.e. long-term information (from both the content
and methodological aspects) (Potocan, 1997;
Harmon, 2003; McLeod, Schell, 2003; Potocan,
2005; Baltzan, Phillips, 2008).
Information
differs from
data
. Available
data
tend to be too many to become informative
(= influential). Selection of data enables inform-
ing, which cannot attain full wholeness, but the
requisite wholeness, hopefully. This requires an
information management innovation
(Poto-
can, 1997; Schultheis, Sumner, 1998; Anderson,
2000; Tichy, Cohen, 2002; Moss, 2004; Potocan,
2005; Bernson, Standing, 2008; Potocan, 2008).
It results in the requisite wholeness of
informa-
tion
. In business, it surfaces in and influences the
basic business and other processes supporting the
entire business.
Both non-economic and general economic
information
on business operation dealt with
are needed in the business managers' economics-
oriented decision making, and can be quantitative
and/or qualitative. To run one's business operation
well one, namely, needs all / requisite various
information
with which quantity, value, and
quality (or any other important) characteristics
of business are presented. Making and using
information
opens a variety of content, VCEN
and methodology issues making it adequate (=
providing requisite, wholeness, realism, appli-
cability, and influence).
The business operation can be found adequate,
when it is successful (efficient and effective in
economic terms), respected (from the aspect of
business behavior), and ethical (morally adequate
from the aspect of a responsible attitude towards
the social and natural environment). To make it
so, the business operation managers need general
information, too.
The majority of general information can have a
direct or indirect impact on economics of business
operation. For this reason, this
information
can
be also a part of the economic information in the
broadest sense of the word. Beside, there is also
information
that can be called non-economic
information for business (such as law, technol-
ogy, sociology, political trends, local, national,
professional, and other cultures, values, ethics,
norms, education, demographic trend, etc.). These
include
messages
,
data
, or
information
that is
not directly related to the business operation, or
is not included in the management of the busi-
ness operation dealt with, but of its environment.
Because of its impact over economics of business
operation this “non-economic” information can be
called indirect economic information. Especially,
under an open-system approach to business man-
agement it is included in requisite information
and knowledge.
With all the briefed diversity, the problem of
the theory and practice of business informatics,
since its beginning, has lied in the target orienta-
tion aimed at requisite wholeness of economic
information. In the past, information support to
management was very often limited to the financial
aspect of the economics business operation alone.
Financial information does present an important
subsystem of information and nothing more.
The modern
business information
focuses on
providing more / requisitely holistic information
necessary for the business operation manage-
ment. This is an important trend in
information
management innovation
.
Herein we find the increased importance of
the indirect economic information. It is difficult
to treat because its definition is problematic. Its
content can be objective and subjective: defined
by processes events as well as by observers and
decision makers.
The
information
is called objective, if it can
be well defined and, therefore, well investigated
on the basis of different quantitative units (e.g.:
quantity, weight, value). Under equal conditions
it is repeatable. But conditions can be subjectively
selected, depending on the selected system of
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