The Structural Prerequisites for the Design of Management Information Systems: A Particular Reference to a Distribution Organisation

Abstract

The object of our case study is a public sector organisation referred to as the Commercial Group (CG). It came into existence in 1964 (Decret, 1964). Up to the end of the 1970s it was part of the big (centralised) steel company, Societe National de Siderurgie, SNS. Change in the political direction of the country has led to a shift in the economic strategy of the government: a turn-around from the centrally planned economy to more flexible decentralised decision-making. This is translated by the restructuring of all the big companies, including SNS. The latter was blown up into fourteen enterprises (Le Comite Central pour la Restructuration des Entreprises, 1981). The most important of these is the National Steel Enterprise (Entreprise Nationale de Siderurgie, ENS)*. It is important in the sense that it has acquired CG as an autonomous operational directorate (direction operationnelle). The latter has been assigned the mission to import, export and distribute the steel and metallurgical products (SMPs) in the country (ENS, 1984).