Chapter 6: End-of-Chapter Questions

1 The four model types are physical, narrative, graphic, and mathematical. For each type, the entity is the phenomenon being represented.

2. All models facilitate understanding and communication. The math model facilitates prediction.

3. The four resource flows are materials, machines, money, and personnel.

4. The closed-loop system contains a feedback loop but an open-loop system does not. The business firm is a closed-loop system.

5. The information dimensions are relevancy, accuracy, timeliness, and completeness.

6. Prevention of errors costs money and an error-free environment would be too costly. Users settle for the error level that they can afford. Also, too much information produces information overload. Users need a volume of information that they can handle.

7. By providing the standards to the information processor it can relieve the manager of much of the monitoring workload.

8. Environmental information goes to the information processor and from there to the manager. The information processor might be a computer, a person, the firm’s mail service, or any other resource that can transmit information.

9. The problem-solving elements of the general systems model include standards, information (the information processor) and the problem solver (management).

10. The standards provide the desired state and the information processor provides the current state.

11. Structured problems have elements, as well as relationships between elements, that are known to the problem solver.

12. The computer can solve a structured problem, assuming that the problem solver has provided the computer with the proper procedure. The manager must solve an unstructured problem alone. The manager can work with the computer to solve a semi-structured problem.

13. Dewey called a problem a controversy, and called a decision a judgment.

14. The three phases of systems approach effort are preparation, definition, and solution.

15. Business areas provide a good way to subdivide a firm into its subsystems. Also popular are management levels. Larger firms are subdivided in terms of their products, customers, and perhaps geographic regions where they do business.

16. The person who is in the best position to recognize a problem trigger is one who is one the scene on a daily basis. This person is invariably the user, and in many cases is a

nonmanager such as a secretary or clerical worker.

17. Standards must be valid, realistic, understandable, and measurable.

18. Solution criteria are what it will take to solve a problem such as an increase in service level to raise it to the desired level. Evaluation criteria are the measures that are used to compare the various alternative solutions.

19. According to Mintzberg, managers select the best alternative by means of analysis, judgment, and bargaining.

Topics for Discussion

I. Answers will vary.

2. The conceptual system elements are analyzed first because they are the ones used to identify problems in the physical system.