The Structure of Management Decision Systems

Abstract

The informatic approach looks at human thinking, organized activity, electronic data processing and management as symbolic phenomena, whose behavior is regulated by a multiplicity of models and programs, all of them instances of information systems; of course they differ because of the diversity of the hardware employed, and even more because of the enormous variety of problems encountered [Newell, Allen, Herbert A. Simon. 1972. Human Problem solving. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p. 870]. The symbolic solution to problems must be therefore understood along three lines [Newell, Allen, Herbert A. Simon. 1972. Human Problem solving. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p. 789]: (1) Description of problems presented by the task environment; this is the typical area of Operations Research, (2) Description of the man-machine processor, be it a group or an institution; Behavioral Sciences study the human processors, which may be significantly influenced by computer technology, and (3) Description of the program which is gradually compiled by the social processor to adapt itself to a task required by the environment. This is the enormous endevour to be undertaken by Management Science.

Dialogue on informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences: Positivist bias misses the symbol-system point

“…I showed the power of my metalinguistic framework in a paper published in Interfaces as early as 1974 (Frischknecht, 1974) without being credited for it in later articles by Kickert (1980), and by Kickert 8z van Gigch (1979). My approach differentiated with rigor and precision (1) (Foerster, 1977).…”

Informatic philosophy of behavioral sciences

“…In this sense, each level acts as metalanguage to prescribe (systematize) the next level (March & Simon, 1958;Frischknecht, 1974Frischknecht, , 1978Kickert & van Gigch, 1979;Kickert, 1980). Starting from a blank memory, natural inference systems can only learn by trial and error, registering new symbols and creating new relations (productions) between internal and external states, and between pairs of symbols, to build a language.…”

“…To learn is to structure a data base to be stored in memory. These conclusions lead to the consideration that something similar is taking place in language, psychology, social psychology, administration, and politics (March & Simon, 1958;Deutsch, 1963;Buckley, 1967;Driver & Streufert, 1969;Simon, 1969;Mitroff & Betz, 1972;Newell & Simon, 1972;Simon & Siklbssy, 1972;Frischknecht, 1974;Betz & Mitroff, 1974;Hunt, 1975;Cairns & Cairns, 1976;Sampson, 1976;Frischknecht, 1978;Tushman & Nadler, 1978;March, 1981;Ungson et al, 1981;Zeleny, 1981;Kiesler & Sproull, 1982;Frischknecht, 1983). The exercise of interpreting the nine proposed categories onto psychology, social psychology, and organization theory has been performed elsewhere (Frischknecht, 1983).…”