Introduction
It is important to note that management plays a critical role in all aspects of an organization, which ranges from its structure and business model to organizational performance. Therefore, managers need to be able to improve their management practices and efforts by integrating information technology to enhance their decision-making in terms of accuracy and magnitude of impact. Understanding the information value chain is vital in order to properly transform data into action leading to a valuable outcome.
Discussion
There are four major roles that management plays in an organization. These include controlling, directing, organizing, and planning (Boundless, 2022). The stated functions “enable management to create strategies and compile resources to lead operations and monitor outputs” (Boundless, 2022, para. 7). Management can be divided into several domains, which involve strategic, operational, human resource, financial, and other forms of management, which directly affect organizational performance (Fuertes et al., 2020). During the planning process, management sets core objectives and goals for an organization in order to create a sound and detailed plan on how to achieve them. The organizing stage involves integrating the determined plan measures into practice, which needs proper change management models and control of the change integration procedures (Xue, 2017). Directing primarily refers to leading efforts where appropriate leadership styles need to be utilized. Lastly, controlling and monitoring are vital to ensure that the plan is constantly being realized and objectives are being achieved.
Since management is a complex and challenging endeavor due to the sheer volume of actions needed to be performed in regard to management functions, information technology can be a major enhancement within such efforts. Key business decisions undertaken by managers rely on input data analysis and identification of the best possible solutions. According to NSTEC, “data can be used by information technology and business decision-making managers to determine what products to promote, how to cut expenses, which customers to serve, and when to order supplies” (2022, para. 9). In other words, IT can provide significant support in collecting, assessing, analyzing, and processing data to help managers make correct decisions across the various levels of management.
Since the case indicates that the business of interest is a chain of movie theatres, it is evident that such an organization has a vertical structure and is dependent on technology, especially for data-driven decisions. The information value chain “is the insight that data only creates value if it goes through a series of steps, steps which eventually result in action back in the real world” (Gallagher, 2017, para. 7). It starts with data collection from the real world, which is likely to be the movie theatre’s customer preferences, numbers, and consumer patterns, such as timeframes. The second stage is the transformation of raw data into information, which is comprehensive and useful. Subsequently, the decisions are made by relying on the analyzed information in the third phase. The last step is action, which is a realization or implementation of the decision into practical efforts to generate value. For a chain of movie theatres, it would be the viewer raw data collection, demographic and preference analysis, making a decision to show a movie of a specific genre.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the four roles of management in an organization include controlling, directing, organizing, and planning, which are relevant to all various domains of managerial focus areas. The role of information technology in helping managers is significant since it can assist in the decision-making process by enabling greater accuracy and precision. The information value chain is a process of transforming raw data into useful information on which actionable decisions can be made.
References
Boundless. (2022). The Role of Management in an Organization. Web.
Fuertes, G., Alfaro, M., Vargas, M., Gutierrez, S., Ternero, R., & Sabattin, J. (2020). Conceptual framework for the strategic management: A literature review. Journal of Engineering, 2020(6253013), 1-21. Web.
Gallagher, F. (2017). The information value chain. IOT Central. Web.
NSTEC. (2022). How to bring managers the importance of technology information? Web.
Xue, C. T. S. (2017). A literature review on knowledge management in organizations. Research in Business and Management, 4(1), 30-41. Web.
