I need more information to clean this title

¶ … positively or negatively to the Wright Company's operating effectiveness. Explain your answer for every one of the 4 reactions.

Many department heads would not act on certain reports during periods of peak activity. The department heads would let these reports accumulate with the hope of catching up during subsequent lulls.

Negatively. By not having any scheduled time to deal with the non-prioritized reports, the reports never get done -- 'when there is a lull' is not a specific, scheduled time to address any kind of departmental issue, as such lulls rarely happen, realistically speaking, in most offices.

Some department heads had so many reports they did not act at all on the information or they made incorrect decisions because of misuse of the information.

Negatively. The department heads are overwhelmed by more information than they can process, cognitively, on a simple, human level. The information they receive is not compartmentalized in a way that it is useful. Simply having the information is not enough, the information must be properly categorized, like a library full of books, so it can be accessed in an organized and efficient manner.

3. Frequently, actions required by the nature of the report data were not taken until the department heads were reminded by others who needed the decisions. These department heads did not appear to have developed a priority system for acting on the information produced by the information processing subsystem.

Negatively. This is more of a human, administrative failure than a technological failure. The department heads must have a way to flag information as having a high priority, merely being important, and of importance, but less important to deal with at the current moment.

4. Department heads often would develop the information they needed from alternative, independent sources, rather than use the reports generated by the information processing subsystem. This was often easier than trying to search among reports for the needed data.

Negatively. The internal filing system should be as easy to access as the alternative, independent sources. Using independent resources, while useful, is no replacement for the reports issued by the department. The office is generating reports that are not being used, which is wasteful logistically speaking in terms of diverted resources, well as a waste of time to the persons involved who are helping produce the data.

For each reaction that you indicated as a negative, recommend alternative procedures the Wright Company could employ to eliminate the negative contribution to operating effectiveness.

1. Many department heads would not act on certain reports during periods of peak activity. The department heads would let these reports accumulate with the hope of catching up during subsequent lulls.

Have a specific time of day to critically evaluate the non-prioritized reports. Conduct an audit of the current report types, and eliminate the type of reports that are not crucial to departmental efficiency. Finally, create a filing system for every department head, whereby reports are immediately placed into important, less important, and non-prioritized categories, but even the non-prioritized file must be emptied by the end of the week, or some other pre-determined deadline.

Some department heads had so many reports they did not act at all on the information, or they made incorrect decisions because of misuse of the information.

According to the information provided, many new department heads often made requests for additional reports according to their specifications, Because the systems department complied with all of these requests and reports were discontinued only on request by a department head (and then only if the request was not a standard report required by top management) few reports were ever discontinued. The system of approving requests for additional reports by department heads should be more stringent. More than one department head should have to sign on for a request for an additional report. Also, the request system for discontinuing reports should be more lenient -- so long as the persons putting forth the request feel the reports are no longer necessary, the reports should be discontinued. For all special reports, there could even be a stringent renewal process; in essence, the additional reports could be automatically discontinued by a certain data unless the persons putting forth the request asked for an extension.

3. Frequently, actions required by the nature of the report data were not taken until the department heads were reminded by others who needed the decisions. These department heads did not appear to have developed a priority system for acting on the information produced by the information processing subsystem.