Explain the need of information at various management levels in the organisation.

Information is any kind of knowledge about things, facts, concepts, etc. that is exchangeable amongst people. It is actually facts provided or learned about something or someone and is the useful knowledge derived from the data. For any manager; information is the key for an organization success as it plays a crucial role in decision making at all levels. Managers at different organizational levels make different types of decisions, control different types of processes, and have different information needs. In order to efficiently do their work, managers must diagnose their information needs. Information is needed for decision making at all levels of management. Managers at different organizational levels make different types of decisions, control different types of processes, and have different information needs. Three levels of management include : Top Management or Strategic Management Middle Management or tactical management Low Level Management or Operational Management Top Level - Strategic managers are responsible for determining the overall goals and objectives of the business. They need the information primarily about the trends in the external environment and the functioning of the internal organisation. Thus, the information utilized by top management is mostly futuristic, external and summarised in nature. Strategic Managers includes directors/owner that make decisions which affect the entire organization, or large parts of it, and leave an impact in the long run. The decision making at this level is highly unstructured. By this we mean, there may not be a proper format for decision making. It requires lot of inputs in terms of information, but there is no fixed way of mixing those inputs. Middle Level - Tactical management may be viewed as 'administrative' management in the sense that it is responsible for the elaboration, classification and operationalization of organization goals, strategies and policies in terms of action. The nature of information required at the middle management level is less diverse, descriptive/detailed and complex. Middle, or tactical, management receive strategic decisions from strategic management as general directives. Using those directives as guidelines, they develop tactics to meet those strategic directives. The decision making at this level is semi structured. Some pieces of information can be mixed to get some conclusion but some amount of ambiguity is always there. Bottom Level - Operational level, managers are responsible for routine, day-to-day decision and activities of the organization, which do not require much discretion. The information required at this level is usually repetitive in nature at periodic intervals such as daily, weekly, or monthly. Operational managers are responsible for daily operations. They make decisions concerning a narrow time span about the deployment of small groups of clerical and / or shop floor workers. Generally the decisions at this level are structured in nature. People in different management levels have different information needs. Most of the information that managers require is used to make decisions. The decision making process of middle managers and above is less structured than that of operational managers. In general, strategic decisions have no proven methods for selecting a course of action that guarantees a predicted outcome.