Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3. The simple three-stage framework of information delivery
Data → Processing of data → Information
Table 4. Expanded framework on information delivery
Reality → Data recording → Processing of selected data → Decision maker ← context
Error types: I. Data recording, II. Process Stage, III. Decision Making
different assessments of fact resulting in
(very) different conclusions? (“Everyone's
eyes have their own painter”, an old prov-
erb says.)
difference, hence to survive in globalize
competition? How is informing adapted to
this rather new fact?
•
How do decision-makers deal with the ex-
perience that the “information asymmetry”
makes you know a part of reality better
than your counterparts do, while making
you blind for another part / many other
parts (your business partners, including
your staff, may distrust you and fail to dis-
close their
information
to you).
We do not say that Cohen's Tables 3 and 4 are
not O.K (Cohen, 2002). We are just following his
suggestion to think more deeply about
errors
in informing systems to add to his quoted three
pointed-out topics:
•
Reality and captured data are not the same,
•
Decision-making takes place within a con-
text, and
•
How do decision-makers perceive, under-
stand and assess context of their decision-
making / thinking / action? All the above
varieties may enter the scene, and make a
long set of very different synergies. Very
different
information
may result.
•
Only selected data are processed.
He is right: »decision-making is only indi-
rectly influenced by reality; there are many steps
that separate reality from the decision-making
process«. On this basis he wants to apply »this
framework as a means to organize the types of
errors
that lead (information) systems to misin-
form their clients«.
We want to contribute by thinking in another
direction: how can one tackle the data-to-infor-
mation-to-decision-to-action process in order to
diminish the number and weight of errors. Data
recording errors follow earlier
errors
in data
selection, and in data selection basis.
We will follow the concept depicted in Table
5 (Mulej et al., 2003; Mulej et al., 2005; Potocan,
2008; etc.).
For decision makers to use a requisitely holistic
approach and thus to attain requisite wholeness
•
How do decision-makers consider the fact
that totally holistic information (i.e. know-
ing everything) is impossible, and they
must base their decisions on assumption
about reality and its future? How do they
use imagination to make realistic strate-
gies? How do they select the essential from
the less essential data / viewpoints /
infor-
mation
/ insights / knowledge?
•
How do decision-makers tackle the fact
that managing today includes a lot of
in-
novation
/ transformation of e.g. way of
interaction with customers, way of for-
mulation of problems internally, way of
imaging the future - in order to make a
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