Report on Management Information System

Journal of Management and Marketing Research

Management information systems and business decision making:

review, analysis, and recommendations

Srinivas Nowduri

Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

The role of Management Information Systems is described and analyzed in light of its

capability for decision making. Decision making process and its impact on top level management

in a business organization is explained with an emphasis on automated decision making.

Limitations and challenges of MIS are discussed and a set of six recommendations proposed for

increasing the effectiveness of MIS in the decision making process.

Keywords: Information Systems, Transactional Processing Systems, TPS, Management

Information Systems, MIS, Expert Systems

Management information systems and business decision making, Page 1

Journal of Management and Marketing Research

1. Introduction

Information Systems can be conceptualized in terms of three types of systems:

Transactional Processing Systems (TPS), Management Information Systems (MIS), and Expert

Systems. MIS has several subsets such as Decision Support Systems and Executive Information

Systems. The role of MIS in decision support is best discussed in the context of the subset

referred to as Decision Support System (DSS). A DSS is a computer based system (an

application program) capable of analyzing an organizational (or business) data and then presents

it in a way that helps the user to make business decisions more efficiently and effectively. It is

basically an informational application which depends on the information already input while

answering to a given query. For example, a decision support system could provide:

• Comparative sales figures for one week/month and the next

• Projected revenue figures based on new product sales assumptions

• Consequences of different decision alternatives, given past experience

Sometimes there is an overlap between the broad categories of IS and a...