Management Information System and Business Strategy
Technology was designed to make our lives easier? This Is what we are being led to believe. But Is It truly the case? In today’s society many people are finding It harder to concentrate on the Job, at home or school because of the constant information flow. We are now required to continuously educate ourselves with the latest technological tools making it more challenging to focus on accomplishing the mission. Module 1 Case states, “Information overload!
The phrase alone is enough to strike terror into the hardiest of managers; it presages the breakdown of society as e know it and the failure of management to cope with change. ” During this module I will discuss information overload and how it has become a problem requiring additional time and energy to research information that may not be necessary. I will also discuss how we people should deal with information overload by limiting the amount of time they spend on information tools learning to organize what they learn. ANALYSIS Search Engines provide us with a wealth of Information. Information that we need and Information we don’t need.
This causes us to become Inundated with more information than we can use. Networked Information should simplify and expedite our research time. For some this is not always true. The information available on the internet is overwhelming. Blair, A. States, “It takes only one or two pages of Google hits to overwhelm the average reader. ” This is true in so many ways. For example, someone searching for a particular subject will first be bombarded with many links relating to his subject. The user will also receive unrelated pop-ups for advertisements causing other window browsers to open for viewing.
These castrations are preventing you from focusing on initial search results. Next thing you know there Is Information coming at you through numerous open links and you find yourself closing pop-ups as quickly as new ones appear. This unnecessary work can be very stressful and overwhelming. D. E. Broadband states “The Filter Model suggests that human senses have a limited “channel capacity” and that people easily become “overwhelmed” by too much information. ” People are being overloaded with information at work, school, and even the safe haven of home.
It’s not healthy for the mind and can lead to stress and anxiety.. Benjamin Ellis states, “Being overwhelmed leads to high levels of stress, resulting in the fight or flight response. ” E-mail is the perfect example of information overload in my office. It is constantly filling co-worker’s in-boxes. Checking e-mail throughout the day takes your focus away from the Job. Dry. Glen Wilson said “The human brain finds it difficult to cope with Juggling lots of tasks at once and that constantly breaking off from tasks to check e-mail slowed the brain down. Stress Is then added on top of this because we are required to put In over-time to make up for the lack of productively. Gregory Northeast states “Technology has made us much more efficient, but much less effective. Time is being gained but Quality of relationships is states, “Information overload was experienced long before the appearance of today’s digital gadgets. ” People can become overwhelmed when starting a new Job. They come into the Job expecting to impress but find them self struggling to learn the basics. If they researched the information needed to do the Job things will run more smoothly.
People have not forgotten how to research information, but they may require help I organizing what they have learned. Networked information will continue to grow at a fast pace, and it’s up to us to keep up with it. Being organized and wanting to learn more should not be a problem for anyone. You will become more knowledgeable when practicing organizing. It starts with a little organization in knowing where you place those reference notes. We are fortunate to have developed continuity binders in my unit. They come in handy when there is no overlap in a position or someone has taken extended emergency leave.
Staying organized can save a lot of time in a society that depends heavily on the internet. Oliver Mark states, “Data in a computer is like having a continuity book; it’s only in existence when you make something of it. ” The information on the internet had to be entered by someone. And these people had to make this information available to the World Wide Web so that others may refer back to it. There is Just so much of the same information out there. People learn from one another and we learn by doing. Just like the social learning theory, the cognitive theory is similar.
The cognitive theory states, “A cognitive theory of multimedia learning based on three main assumptions: there are two separate channels (auditory and visual) for processing information; there is limited channel capacity; and that learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing, and integrating information. ” It is important to create your own preservation of notes, by sorting, selecting and summarizing to help overcome being overwhelmed by networked information. Blair, A. Describes to sort and keep notes of what you want to know.
She states, “Today search engines can track the keywords chosen by individual users and writers, but e still need library cataloger and indexers who can identify relevant category terms that do not appear explicitly in the text and who can group related topics under consistent subject headings. Subject and index headings perforce change over time, as do the categories by which we remember and manage our own notes; they remain a uniquely powerful tool. ” Next she describes to select only what you need to know and summarize it. With all the information out on the network you can sometimes have pages of information that you really don’t need.
Blair, A. States, “Keyword earaches and data mining offer tempting alternatives to earlier methods used by readers and authors to select the “best bits” to store and later refer to. ” Time management is part of being organized; Individuals that are organized will have less stress dealing with information overload, one really good network tool is outlook. In outlook you can create folders to help organize incoming emails. Above I stated that many individuals are overwhelmed or stressed because they have too many e-mail coming all at once. Outlook can synchronize them so that they can come back and read them later.
Knowing how to use networked tools should make your life easier; however you must be willing to want to learn the new technology. Marks, O. State, “Machines communicate at ever more sophisticated levels with each other in bombarding us with information your time commitment can be significant. The flow of networked information into and through organization can be overwhelming, however, individuals must learn how to Just deal with what is coming their way and show initiative that they are willing to learn how these networked tools work to help them be organized, save time and be less overwhelmed.
Networked information is like the news it reports what people want to hear and what the individual chooses to listen to, what people decide to take in is up to the individual to control how they are going to react. Blair, A. States, “It’s important to remember that information overload is not unique to our time, lest we fall into doom saying. At the same time, we need to proceed carefully in the transition to electronic media. ” EVALUATION I think technology is great, however it can be overwhelming. Many of us don’t know how to research what we need or use because we always want to learn more.
We overwhelm ourselves because we can’t Just focus on a single thing. We would rather multi-task. But it is important that we learn how to take notes because someday our children may want the same information we have learned. Blair, A. States, “Like generations before us, we need all the tools for gathering and assessing information that we can muster?some inherited from the past, others new to the present. Many of our technologies will no doubt rapidly seem obsolete, but, we can hope, not human attention and Judgment, which should continue to be the central components of thoughtful information management.
