OBJECTIVES OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
SYSTEM
Information has been and always will be the foundation stone and Management
Information Systems encompass an overture to the foundations, technology and
applications of Management Information Systems (MIS).
• Identify systems of information flow
• How organizations use information systems.
• Be familiar with the basic theories, concepts, methods, and terminology used in
information systems.
• Conceptualize information systems as Systems of Information; i.e., be able to
apply basic concepts of Systems Theory and Information to realworld
management information systems.
• Conceptualize information systems as complexes of hardware and software
technologies and represent these complexes in system theoretical terms.
• Basics of management information system (MIS) familiarize with the stages of
development of a simple MIS and its applications.
• Understand the relationships, both historical and current, between the use of
information systems and business productivity.
• List the types of enterprise systems and the function they perform.
• Show the key components of an organization’s network.
• Ensure how there could be a flow of information within and outside the
organization.
• Act as interface among sections and management tiers.
• Provide an overview of information successes and failures and some of their
causes.
MIS : A THREE LETTER ACRONYM
⇒ M Which stands for Management?
⇒ I Which stands for Information
⇒ S Which stands for System
FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT
If you are going to visualize an army with no general, a player with no coach, or a
country without a government. How could the military beat the foe? How could the
team win games? How could the nation keep away from total rebellion? So to make
these above things streamline we need management which is an important ingredient.
Management has been defined as a process of getting things done through others. This
process is identified in a set of functions performed by managers to accomplish the
goals. A manager is thus someone who defines, plans, guides, helps out, and assesses
the work of others, frequently people for whom the manager is accountable in an
organization. The following mentioned management functions will involve creative
problem solving.
• Planning : According to Terry and Franklin, “planning is selecting information
and making assumptions concerning the future to put together the activities
necessary to achieve organizational objectives.” Planning includes both the
broadest view of the organization, e.g., its mission, and the narrowest, e.g., a
tactic for accomplishing a specific goal.
• Organizing : Organizing is the classification and categorization of requisite
objectives, the grouping of activities needed to accomplish objectives, the
assignment of each grouping to a manager with the authority necessary to
supervise it, and the provisions for coordination horizontally and vertically in the
organization structure. The focus is on separation, coordination, and control of
tasks and the flow of information inside the organization. It is in this function that
managers allocate authority to job holders.
• Directing : Direction is telling people what to accomplish and seeing that they do
it to the finest of their capability. It includes making assignments, corresponding
procedures, seeing that mistakes are corrected, providing onthejob instruction
and, of course, issuing orders.” The purpose of directing is to control the behavior
of all personnel to accomplish the organization's mission and objectives while
simultaneously helping them accomplish their own career objectives.
• Staffing : Staffing requires recognition of human resource needs, filling the
organizational structure and keeping it filled with competent people. Recruiting,
hiring, training, evaluating and compensating are the specific activities included
in the function.
• Controlling : “Control is the course of action that measures present performance
and guides it towards some predetermined goal. The quintessence of control lies
in checking existing a