Information retrieval behavior

The “need” for information can be caused by four types of modes (Vandenbosch, 1997). When managers have no intention or specific purpose to find anything and are just viewing some data it is called undirected viewing or scanning which is often the case in the first sub phase of the decision making process. This is similar to undirected surfing on the internet. At the extreme other end of the continuum, we find the formal search mode which is “a deliberate effort to find a piece of information” (Aquilar, 1967). This is also referred to as focused searching.

A general task model of the decision making process

 

The succession of steps that managers perform when they are engaged in the intelligence phase (see Turban, 1993) using a business intelligence system, can be generalized as a set of strategies that make up a general task model of the senior manager when involved in a decision making process. This general task model of the decision making process accommodates the procedure discovered by Borgman. That procedure shows that managers are engaged initially in broad and systematic browsing (the checklist scanning approach) and focus, in a later stage, based on the results of the scan with large conceptual distances between successive queries (Borgman, 1994). This checklist scanning approach can be extended and translated into the following successive steps.

Decision making

In order to be a successful “driver of the car”, the manager should make deliberate and accurate decisions. Such decisions should be undertaken when the organisation is not running properly in any way. The manager should “steer the wheel” and ask himself continually “Should I turn left now, or can I drive the car forward for a while and then turn to the left? “. These questions remind us that making no decision will also be a decision. To make proper decisions, managers ask for current and reliable management information.

The basic cycle of the management process

The management process is performed within a generic cycle of five steps (Mintzberg, 1975):

1. Planning, budgeting and setting norms;
2. Organizing;
3. Coordinating;
4. Deciding;
5. Controlling.

What managers actually do

These steps tell us little about what managers are actually doing and how they are doing it. Without such concrete information, we are not able to design and build planning or information systems that are dedicated to managers (Mintzberg, 1975); neither are we able to define a knowledge-based system that assists in building the interface of such systems. Although this cycle is very unspecific it deserves clarification and discussion related to the user interface of business intelligence systems.