Strategies for information requirements determination
IBM Systems Journal
International Journal of Information Management: The Journal for Information Professionals
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The design of organization-wide information systems has suffered from a narrow bottom-up, data processing orientation. Emphasis has been on developing management information systems oriented toward the internal, analytical, problem-solving, concrete fact and data requirements of lower, operational and functional levels of the organization to the exclusion of external, intuitive, problem-finding, creative needs of higher, strategic levels. Utilizing stratified systems theory and the work of Elliott Jaques this paper proposes a new model for information system design based on the findings that the way managers go about their work at succeedingly higher levels in an organization is both quantitatively and qualitatively different. These differences are in turn based on the discovery of levels of stratification in hierarchically structured, bureaucratic organizations. Higher responsibility in work is quantitatively measurable by the longest time span in which a person works at his or her own discretion, and sets the context within which people construct their world of work. Qualitative descriptions of each level of work provide a means for defining and specifying the varying information requirements of each level within the context of the organization's dynamic, changing environment.