Case Study: Managing for Organizational Integrity

Category: Integrity, Organization
Last Updated: 04 Aug 2021
Essay type: Case Study
Pages: 19 Views: 89
Table of contents

The aim/purpose of this report is to discuss how the information systems are managed systematically in an organizational operation.

How those frontline managers should be competent in managing the systems, developing business plans and budgets as well as managing the resource proposal are made are researched in sources listed in the Bibliography and the practicable application of it in business as demonstrated by the case study of Blacktown city council which is followed by the theory of manage workplace information systems with the help of class notes and further researched on the Blacktown city council and is presented as two facts information as theory and practical.

To manage information systems systematically and scientifically frontline managers must be capable of identifying, acquiring, analyzing, reviewing, and using appropriate information so that the organization would run effectively and efficiently. This report is written in such way that it satisfy all the 9 points needed for frontline managers to make right decisions at the right time for the successful operation of business, considering the proper management of a team to achieve team goals and objectives.

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This report has been written to satisfy the requirements of course in the ‘Electrical Engineering Unit,’ Ensure Team Effectiveness at WSI TAFE NSW Mount Druitt College.

OVERVIEW

Management of information system (MIS) is a planned system of the collecting, processing, storing and disseminating data in the form of information needed to carry out the functions of management. In a way it is a documented report of the activities those were planned and executed.

It can also be defined as the subset of the overall internal control of a business covering the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures by management accountants to solving business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. Most importantly MIS are those systems that allow managers to make decisions for the successful operation of businesses.

MIS is the process of allocating information an organization's inputs, including human and economic resources, by planning, organizing, directing, and controlling for the purpose of producing goods or services desired by customers so that organizational objectives are accomplished. If management has knowledge of the planning, organizing, directing, and controlling of the business, its decisions can be made on the basis of facts, and decisions are more accurate and timely.

As a result, the manager could easily distinguish the weaknesses and the strength of the company so that they could work them out properly by removing the drawbacks and overcoming the weaknesses and overpowering the strength so that the company could properly achieve the set goals in efficient and effective manner. In addition to this, managers should be considerably aware of the aim/ goal of the company and the overall team participation taking care of the entire team member’s Occupational Health and Safety.

In the age of information technology, the need for relevant and timely information to support management in decision making is increasing due to market competition. The quickly changing environment brought about by the rapidly expanding capabilities of computer equipment has substantially shortened system's life cycles. Consequently, management must continuously develop its organization's information system or, soon face the competitive disadvantage resulting from obsolete information systems.

Blacktown city council is a governmental organisation which governed and funded by the government of Australia and it is actively participating in the development projects in cooperation with Federal Government of Australia. It is a public sector as well as community sector organisation. Its nature includes developing and initiating plans and projects, developing the strategies for the welfare and facilitating the people of entire Blacktown including the dense multicultural and diverse community.

It also includes the facilities like the basics of life including the leisure and lifestyle, arts and entertainment like libraries, parks, reserves, child care centres, clubs etc. The nature of work involves governing all the people living in Blacktown as a local government and providing each and every facilities that a local government should provide and is capable of. It includes the managing waste ,cleaning the public places, constructing the parks, reserves, clubs , child care centres and repairing of all those and lots of other projects.

The aim and objectives of Blacktown city council can be briefly explained as below:

  • To serve a whole Blacktown community as a parent organisation.
  • To provide each and every facilities for the diverse and dense multicultural community.
  • Carry out different planned project and implementing it for the development of Blacktown city and its welfare.
  • To workout for the different ways that can satisfies the local people and maintains the social harmony, peace, etc.
  • To provide safe environment for people in working and enjoying freely.
  • Safeguarding the people needs and necessities and maintain secure place to live in.

The project is on the Blacktown City council, Department of planning Engineering Team’s proposal of the ‘promotion of solar city products’ initiatives.

Effective use of the information system is the key for the success of the company so that it is extremely necessary to ensure the effective use of organisational information systems. In case if the information is not immediately available strategies should be developed and the decision should be made.

There are different barriers for the effective information gathering and unavailability of the immediate information. Poor documentation, poorly designed information systems, poor searching skills, inexperienced, untrained, unskilled managers, imperfect computer systems, lack of human resources and the politics are the great hidden costs in organisation which will led us to the information shortage of immediate information. Hence, the strategies involved in sorting those problems out can be described as followed:

  • All the information systems should be properly designed with all the new and advance technologies.
  • Outdated computer systems should be renewed and supervised with the effective and useful information.
  • Information managing staffs should be trained and should be experience with very good skills.
  • Human resources should be properly managed and workload to the workers reduced.

Also information should be gathered with best methods with raw data continually scanned and selected most useful pieces in timely manner. Examples of some common processes would include:

  • Interviews with focussed questions towards organisational goal.
  • Reports should be with good secondary source of information.
  • Focusing group also including a way of getting brainstorming ideas on a particular topic from people who represent a range of employee, client or supplier positions.
  • Questionnaires witп questions of carefully worded to lead to people to respond in a certain way.
  • To ensure the proper management of information systems it is necessary that collection of information should be timely, adequate and relevant to the needs of various teams.

For the information to be on the effective use it should be available on when it is needed so that information should gathered and organised on the time. Adequate data is the complete data which is sufficient information when it is needed to be applied. Relevant information is also called as- to the point, means which is accurate information. Untimely and inadequate data or information could even mislead the information systems from achieving it goals. So it becomes necessary to monitor that information be relevant, sufficient and on at right time.

Before the implementation of the strategies it is necessary to review the organisational goal or purpose as well as occupational health and safety as these are the things which matters the most. The range of strategies that ensures the collection of information is timely, relevant and adequate to the needs of the teams can be explained in details as below:

Transactions processing systems: All the transactions should be constantly monitored by the information system . All the processes of the transactions should be recorded in the database as sale items, amount, time, date, employee etc. that each and every data goes to the system.

Management information system: Data base plays the most important role in information management system covering in about each and every sections of the organisation. If database is managed timely and properly, it will be relevant, adequate and timely information.

Decision support system: As decision making is the most important and crucial part of management of any organisation, decision support system plays a vital role in it. So it provides interactive information support to managers during the decision making process. This would help in timely and relevant decision making. . Manual systems: Although electronics and digital systems become the basics of information management, manual systems are equally important yet. Filing cabinets, message books, phone directories and card systems are all legitimate information systems which are still used and plays one of important role in timely and adequate information management. The success of these strategies could be measured by comparing that information with the new information and the weakness and drawbacks can be correctly categorized and figured out so that managers have the right vision of their outcomes and goal.

Implementation of all those systems correctly would also ensure the managerial success as well as the strategic success in organisation.

Planning is the basics of organisational success, as every outcome depends upon its performance plan and its implementation. The organisational strategic planning processes produce a direct impact on the organisational aim or goal. So it becomes extremely necessary that it should be on the right tract on the organisational benefit. Hence the strategic processes that would identify and report relevant information to support the organisation’s strategic planning processes.

At team level, resource planning involves planning for the resources ( staffs, equipment, budget, technology, Company databases, Integrated management software, Client relationship management tool, Supply chain management tool, Application jobs, Network infrastructure, Data servers and storage systems, Security devices) that is needed for next cycle. Not everyone will be involved in the macro- level resource planning that involves the acquisition of capital and other big ticket items. However it is important that everyone in an organization undertakes this at the macro level.

Many organizations have specialists or staff whose roles are dedicated to resource planning. Computer plays main role as the prerequisites for all the information systems. While computers cannot create business strategies by themselves they can assist management in understanding the effects of their strategies, and help enable effective decision-making. MIS systems can be used to transform data into information useful for decision making. Computers can provide financial statements and performance reports to assist in the planning, monitoring and implementation of strategy.

MIS systems provide a valuable function in that they can collate into coherent reports unmanageable volumes of data that would otherwise be broadly useless to decision makers. By studying these reports decision-makers can identify patterns and trends that would have remained unseen if the raw data were consulted manually. Those principles are relevant for the proposals that manager might take at a macro level. Most importantly the strategic planning processes can be identified and report relevant information can be supported by the following types of Systems:

Management information systems can be used as a support to managers to provide a competitive advantage. The system must support the goals of the organization. Most organizations are structured along functional lines, and the typical systems are identified as follows:

  • Accounting management information systems: All accounting reports are shared by all levels of accounting managers.
  • Financial management information systems: The financial management information system provides financial information to all financial managers within an organization including the chief financial officer.
  • The chief financial officer analyses historical and current financial activity, projects future financial needs, and monitors and controls the use of funds over time using the information developed by the MIS department.
  • Manufacturing management information systems: More than any functional area, operations have been impacted by great advances in technology. As a result, manufacturing operations have changed. For instance, inventories are provided just in time so that great amounts of money are not spent for warehousing huge inventories.In some instances, raw materials are even processed on railroad cars waiting to be sent directly to the factory. Thus there is no need for warehousing.
  • Marketing management information systems: A marketing management information system supports managerial activity in the area of product development, distribution, pricing decisions, promotional effectiveness, and sales forecasting. More than any other functional areas, marketing systems rely on external sources of data. These sources include competition and customers, for example.
  • Human resources management information systems: Human resources management information systems are concerned with activities related to workers, managers, and other individuals employed by the organization. Because the personnel function relates to all other areas in business, the human resources management information system plays a valuable role in ensuring organizational success. Activities performed by the human resources management information systems include, work-force analysis and planning, hiring, training, and job assignments.

The above are examples of the major management information systems which would support the decision making and the report relevant information at the strategic level. There may be other management information systems if the company is identified by different functional areas.

Technology plays the role of backbone in the context of information management. All the technology should be used in such a manner that it ensures the complete utilization as well as it ensures that it can satisfy the level of information that an organisation need to fulfil its goal.

So this technological information should satisfy the demand of the organisation. It is obvious that any organisation is not same every time and change according to the time. So the information system or technology cannot be able to satisfy the nature of change in the information system in an organisation. So it becomes an essential that technology should be constantly monitored and constantly improved. The manager should be able of getting most out of the available technology to the organisation so that at the minimum cost and expenses company could get the maximum benefits.

It is necessary to understand that the amount of information is not the problem but rather the lack of effective tools and skills to manage, use and store the information. The information is in the system or technology is available is not a guarantee you are deriving maximum benefit from it. So the using of technology effectively can be briefly explained in the following ways:

  • The resources of the organisation such as intranet and email or the existing developed system are reliable so that it does not affect the availability of information at any point of time.
  • People have been adequately briefed or trained on the use and features of the technology available so that they can properly handle the information systems and make the maximum use of available resources.
  • Policies, training materials, the staff phone directory and other vital information stored on the company intranet. This saves paper and ensures all staff has up to date information.
  • A filing system should be organised in such a manner that it can be clearly and easily available to the people who are in need of it and it saves the vital time. A regular maintenance process to remove documents, customers and other information that is no longer relevant or current.
  • People should be trained on the regular manner so that they could properly deal with the demand of the new and developing information systems.

The proper management of information also includes the team involvement and it is extremely necessary that whole team is working as a unit so that maximum utilization of resources can be done with minimum input if the team work as one unit. So it becomes necessary to ensure team effectiveness.

Ensuring Team Effectiveness in a team plays the most important role in achieving goals and objectives of the overall organization and the team itself. The team’s purpose, roles, responsibilities, goals, plans, and objectives should be identified and these are related to the organizational goals, plans and objectives. Each and every team members should be supported in meeting the expected outcomes. Plans are developed to ensure that work required by the organization to carry out its goals. Opportunities should be created and should be properly managed for the team to provide input into ny of the team’s operations including decision making. To get maximum out of team or utilising the involvement of team in the workplace is the responsibility of manager. So managers should come out with the strategies which would maximise team contribution, involvement and support for the business plan and budgets. The strategies would involve following:

  • Each and ever team members’ occupational health and safety should be ensured so that all the staff can concentrate on their work and give maximum of them.
  • Team members should be motivated towards their job and they should be constantly be considering the aim or goal of the organisation is and how they can contribute as an individual and as a team member for the company goal.
  • Team should be involved in business plan so that that the planning and its implement would be better. The common elements of business plan including Executive summary, vision, company description, action plan, market position, product or services, operation, marketing/ sales, financial information. So if all these information are available for entire team for the business plan, team contribution would be increased.
  • Budgeting process should involve feedback from all key stakeholders. Apart from the intimate knowledge, team members have of operation, involving them will make them know and understand what you are trying to achieve. If they are involved in target setting, they are more likely to accept the targets and be motivated to perform. The budgets including Revenue budget, expense budget, profit budget, cash budget, capital expenditure budget, variable budgets should be properly fixed out and the forecasting and its utilization should be properly managed.

Success of organisation depends upon its planning and implementation. Planning plays vital role as what ever is planned the ultimate destination of the company as well as workplace information systems. Planning is directly associated with the organisational aim or goal, it becomes necessary that planning would be effective and its implementation can be carried out efficiently. With only one development phase remaining before the new system is to put into use, managers and information specialists have a good understanding of the work necessary to implementation plan.

This planning process should be a function of line management, at least as far as key decisions or alternative plans are concerned. The systems analyst may prepare plans to assist managers, but managers must have the last say. At the same time, managers require the services of the systems analyst to detail plans. The major strategies involved in implementation of plans, tasks, or milestones, can be discussed as following:

  1. planning implementation activities should be carried out in taking consideration of the aim or purpose of company, information systems and the occupational health and safety;
  2. announcing the implementation is to be done so as to inform the employees of the decision to implement the new system and to ask for the employees’ cooperation ;
  3. organising for implementation can be described as assigning the project and information managers as well as all the new facilities including offices and information resources and equipments;
  4. acquiring resources, facilities and offices including the installation of a new system to replacea currentone and major revision of the facilities;
  5. obtaining the hardware resources; it plays major role in information systems as it would be the equipment for the management of workplace information including computers;
  6. obtaining the software resources; Information managers are assign with the responsibility of the management of software required for all the information systems. The software like intranet, company websites, database should be obtained and managed by the managers;
  7. preparing the database; data base should be designed according to the need of the information system of the organisation;
  8. educating and training the participants and users;
  9. the cutover to new system.

The plans should list all subtasks for each of these major tasks so that individuals in the organisation may be assigned specific responsibilities. Developing good user documentation is an important part of the implementation process. Documentation is extremely important in diagnosing errors and marking changes, especially if end users or systems analyst that developed the system are no longer with the organisation.

The documentation of manual IS may consist of:

  • Announce the implementation
  • Organise for implementation
  • Acquire resources, facilities and offices
  • Obtain resources-hardware
  • Obtain resources-softwares
  • Prepare the database
  • Educate and train the participants and users

Managing the contingency plans should be prepared to address an unexpected change to the plan of the organisation and information systems. So managers should prepare the plans required in case of change like industrial disputes, supply problems, loss of a key customer, and fire damage to key equipment.

The effective management of contingency plans would be:

  • to identify the internal and external factor in the organisation that can cause a significant change to happen to the organisation
  • ask a series of ‘what if …. ’ question around those factors that affect your organisation
  • brainstorm some suggestions on how you could best meet those situations with no, or minimum, disruption to your business
  • briefly record these plans and file in case of need.

It will benefit you update these plans each year as part of your normal planning or budgeting process.

Resources plays important role in the organisational information systems as they are the basics of the information. So managing the equipments, like hardware software, databases etc. should be done. To do these resource proposals and estimates of the resources should be developed. For this, consultation should be carried out with the stakeholders and proposals should match the organisational business plans and organisational goal. The installation of a new system too replace a current on may require a major revision of facilities as well as completely new offices, computer rooms, and production layouts.

The project manager must prepare rough layouts and estimates and submit a proposal for approval. Facilities and space planning should begin as soon as approval of gross space allocations has been obtained. the urgency for such planning is two-fold. First here may be a long lead-time if new partitions, electrical work, air conditioning and even new building are required. Second, the detailed workflow depends upon the physical arrangements of building. The training personnel will be more successful if their operations are base on exact physical relationships mong the people and the equipment in the work processes. Hardware resources: The system design is made available to the suppliers of the type of computing equipment contained in the approved configuration. Each supplier is provided with the request for proposal. The description of the system design enables the suppliers to select those computing units that will d the best job. The installation schedule tells the suppliers when the equipment must be delivered and made ready for use. When suppliers choose to complete for the order, they each prepare a written proposal.

When all the proposal have been received and analysed, the steering committee selects the suppliers. The information specialists provide support for this decision by studying the proposals and making recommendations. With the acquisitions approved, the firm places the order. Software Resources: When a firm decides to create its own application software, the programmer uses the documentqation prepared by the systems analysts as the starting point. The programmer may prepare more detailed documentation, such as structured English or program flowcharts.

The coding is performed and the programs are tested. The end products is a software library of the application programs.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The project for the Blacktown solar cities is running from 2006 to 2013 and this business plan has been developed in the context of the solar city vision for the promotion of solar cities products. As planning and development section of Blacktown city council are committed to the conservation, restoration and enhancement of an environment which plays an important role in balancing the social, economic and environmental imperatives in Blacktown city.

This initiative has the aim to promote solar products that reflect the Council’s positive vision towards environment. The initiative is to train and equip a team of consultants who will promote solar products offered by Blacktown council as a solar city initiative. This team will conduct home interest in the range of solar products and encourage people for using these solar products so that they could get reasonable benefits as well as contribute towards the environment. The members of this team will inform and register the potential consumers of the council’s range of products.

The timing period of this initiative is one year after which it will be reviewed for its inclusion onto 2010-2011 Blacktown council’s management budget. The estimated cost of this initiative is $53,705. Details of expenditure are listed as facts in the action plan summary. As the total budget allocation for health and environment services for 2009-2010 is $1,676,128. With its help Blacktown residents, business and community organisations save money by using energy more wisely, contribute towards environment, saving energy and generating their own energy then it should be considered worthwhile.

This initiative is taken in response to a lack of formally recruited consultants who will be promoting the Solar City products in the Blacktown area. The types of products being promoted includes different packages that will be provided featuring solar PV, solar hot water, energy efficiency, free energy audits, smart meters, demand management, cost reflective pricing and innovative financing which would be easy, economic, effective and efficient. 2. Vision:

The ‘promotion of Solar City Products’ initiative is consistent with the Solar City Vision of the Blacktown Council. This is outlined below: Blacktown Solar City Facts Blacktown City is the first Solar City in New South Wales. With funding under the Australian Government’s $75 million Solar Cities initiative, the Blacktown Solar City consortium is working with industry, businesses and the local community to rethink the way they produce and use energy.

PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF SOLAR CITY VISION FOR THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

  • Over one megawatt of solar electricity technology will be installed on private and public housing and on commercial and iconic buildings, which saves a lot of electricity which could be sold to the foreign country to have a good national income as well would be supplied to the remote part of the country.
  • Financial solutions will be available to help consumers finance their solar systems so that there will be no financial problems for it.
  • About 5000 job vacancy will be created so as to fight with the current job losses and economic downturn in the country. More than 2,100 solar water heaters will be installed in private and public housing, which will help to reduce the bill as well as use right source of energy.
  • 3,500 energy efficiency consultations for households and businesses which would serve people.
  • 30,000 energy efficinency packs will be available for households and commercial customers, to support their energy efficient choices.
  • Offering 1,000 customers the opportunity to adopt pricing structures that allow them to save money by changing the times they use energy. 200 households will receive discounted ceiling insulation packages to participate in a trial to measure energy savings from properly installed insulation.
  • A trial giving energy providers direct access to air conditioner and pool pump switches will be conducted during periods of peak electricity demand.
  • 4,000 smart meters will give residential customers timely information on energy use.

PROFILE OF BLACKTOWN CITY COUNCIL

Blacktown city council is just 35 km from the Sydney CBD. It is a home to over 295,000 people making it as the largest local government area in New South Wales.

Blacktown city population is spread across 46 suburbs. The 12 industrial estates, 2 major retail centres and 30 local retail and commercial centres are providing employment for more than 100,000 multicultural and varied diverse individuals. Five leisure centres, four libraries , over 20 child care facilities, as well as high profile clubs, tourism , sporting, entertainment, accommodation, conference and other recreational facilities and some 850 parks and reserves are fulfilling the demands of leisure and lifestyle, and arts and entertainment of local people.

The council has a debt free budget of over $275 million. 15 councillors including Mayer of Blacktown city are running the council. This council is highly efficient in waste management and strongly protective of our environment. This council was awarded the state’s most prestigious local government award for performing to the highest standards of excellence in public services.

RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN AND DATA COLLECTION

A research undertaken includes the survey conducted in the Blacktown city. The survey through telephone, direct conversation, Feedback from the website, consultation with the analysts of the Blacktown city council also with all the staffs, public areas, e-mail, mailbox etc. can be done to collect the data and know the weakness area and the strong ponit. The data collection in the database would also includes the feedbacks with recommendations, which can be reviewed for the change in strategies and plan for the Blacktown solar city.

VERIFICATION OF DATA

The forth coming data collected from the overall survey is needed to be verified.

All of those data should be checked and confirmed that those data would give the idea that what brings the clear concepts of the public vision and city council can know what they want and how they want. So this data must be review by the approved person in the organisation who can sort out the issues relating the data collection through the researched. This data is send to the team manager or the chief engineer for review.

FINANCIAL CALCULATION AND CAPITAL SOURCES

Blacktown City Council is dedicated to providing residents with the best possible living and working environments, as well as making plans for the future that promote the interests of those who live, work and play in the City. The 2009-2012 Management Plan (including 09/10 Budget) was adopted by Council on the 17 of June 2009.

It outlines how Council will allocate it's resources to service the City in a financially responsible and equitable manner, to ensure quality services and resources are delivered to our community. Based on the expenditure, the capital amount which is the direct source from the budget is to be outlined. Blacktown city council expanses in the field of solar city project are about $100,000 and which includes $53,705 for the initiatives and remaining of the budget is to be modified or reviewed by the chief engineer or the team leader, So that the proper utilization of budget is carried out.

RECOMMENDATIONS

This proposal recommends that the idea behind implementing the project, Blacktown solar city is the best thing to do by a local government like Blacktown city council.

The benefits of solar products such as solar water heater, solar PV, etc to the people would certainly encourage the Blacktown city resident for contributing in environment conservation and global warming reduction. This projects should run not only on the Blacktown premises but should be carried out in whole world so that every one in the world would get benefit of it and we could see better future. Conclusion: The above mentioned facts of theoretical way of managing workplace information systems and their practicable application in the Blacktown city councils’ solar city project would satisfies all the basics required for the management of workplace information systems.

REFERENCES

  1. www. blacktown. nsw. com. au
  2. www. integral. com. au
  3. Handouts given in the class about the case study of blacktown city council.

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Case Study: Managing for Organizational Integrity. (2018, Feb 06). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/case-study-managing-for-organizational-integrity/

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