Management information: knowing, explaining and arguing

Abstract

In this chapter the ideas of the preceding chapters will be brought together to create a basis for reflecting on management information. The chapter will start with a brief review of some of the current concepts of management information. It will show that the current archetype of management information is merely a combination of the traditional first-order cybernetics concepts of management (the Taylorist dualism) and the traditional techno-functional paradigm of information and that these concepts are very limited in their potential for providing insight into the involved nature of management information in-the-world. This will be followed by an outline of an alternative framework for management information drawing on the modes of being of the involved manger that were discussed in Chapter 2. This framework will indicate that management information is a far richer and more implicit concept than suggested by the current techno-functionalist thinking.

One needs organized information for feedback. One needs reports and figures. But unless one builds one’s feedback around direct exposure to reality — unless one disciplines oneself to go out and look — one condemns oneself to a sterile dogmatism and with it to ineffectiveness.

Peter Drucker