Ch. 13: Communication and Information Technology Management Flashcards
What is data?
Raw, unsummarized, and unanalyzed facts.
What is information?
Data that are organized in a meaningful fashion.
What is real-time information?
Frequently updated information that reflects current conditions.
What is information technology (IT)?
The set of methods or techniques for acquiring, organizing, storing, manipulating, and transmitting information.
What is a management information system (MIS)?
A specific form of IT that managers utilize to generate
the specific, detailed information they need
to perform their roles effectively.
What is communication?
The sharing of information between two or more individuals or groups to reach a common understanding.
What is a sender?
The person or group wishing to share information.
What is a message?
The information that a sender wants to share.
What is encoding?
Translating a message into understandable symbols or language.
What is noise?
Anything that hampers any stage of the communication process.
What is a receiver?
The person or group for which a message is intended.
What is a medium?
The pathway through which an encoded message is transmitted to a receiver.
What is decoding?
Interpreting and trying to make sense of a message.
What is verbal communication?
The encoding of messages into words, either written or spoken.
What is nonverbal communication?
The encoding of messages by means of facial expressions, body language, and styles of dress.
What is information richness?
The amount of information that a communication medium can carry and the extent to which the medium enables the sender and receiver to reach a common understanding.
What is management by wandering around?
A face-to-face communication technique in which a manager walks around a work area and
talks informally with employees about issues and concerns.
What is information overload?
A superabundance of information that increases the likelihood that important information is ignored or overlooked and tangential information receives attention.
What is a product life cycle?
The way demand for a product changes in a predictable pattern over time.
What are the four stages of the product life cycle?
1) Embryonic phase: A product has yet to gain widespread acceptance; customers are unsure what a product, such as a new smartphone, has to offer, and demand for it is minimal.
2) Growth stage: Many consumers are entering the market and buying the product for the first time, and demand increases rapidly.
3) Maturity stage: Begins when market demand peaks because most customers have already bought the product (there are relatively few first- time buyers left). At this stage, demand is typically replacement demand.
4) Decline stage: Begins this typically occurs when advancing IT leads to the development of a more advanced product, making the old one obsolete, such as when the iPod destroyed Sony’s Walkman franchise.
What is information distortion?
Changes in meaning that occur as information passes through a series of senders and receivers.
What is a transaction-processing system?
A management information system designed to handle large volumes of routine, recurring transactions.
What is operations information system?
A management information system
that gathers, organizes, and summarizes comprehensive data in a form that managers can use in their nonroutine coordinating, controlling, and decision-making tasks.
What is a decision support system?
An interactive computer-based management information system with model- building capability
that managers can use when they must make nonroutine decisions.
What is an expert system?
A management information system
that employs human knowledge captured
in a computer to solve problems that ordinarily require human expertise.
