As a manager of an organisation, you may need various types of information for arriving at various decisions. The quality of decision making depends upon the value of the information. What criterias are used to distingui

Information is of value to decision makers if it is accurate, timely, complete, and relevant. If it is poor on any of these criteria, it will be less useful hence may not have that value. These four criteria are used to distinguish valuable information from information that is of less value. Accurate information provides a reliable and valid representation of reality. The cost of inaccurate or distorted information can be extremely high. Consider the demise of the multimillion dollar Mars Climate Orbiter launched by NASA in 1998. The tragic outcome of this mission was blamed on the failure of one scientific team to recognize and correct an error in information from another team. Timely information is information that is available when it is needed. When information is needed almost always depends on the situation. Timely information can avoid accidents, prevent losses and keep your Business active/alive. Complete information tends to be comprehensive in covering the issue or topic of interest. Complete information tells a complete story. Without complete information, a decision maker will get a distorted view of reality. Incomplete market information can lead businesses to introduce products and services that customers don't want. Relevant Information: Information is relevant if it has significance or can be applied to a specific situation, problem, or issue of interest. Human resource managers need information on hiring and employee turnover; operations managers need information on costs and productivity; marketing managers need information on sales projections and advertising rates; top executives need information on the strategic actions of their competitors. Availability/Accessibility: Information should be easy to obtain or access. Information kept in a book of some kind is only available and easy to access if you have the book to hand. A good example of availability is a telephone directory, as every home has one for its local area. It is probably the first place you look for a local number. But nobody keeps the whole country's telephone books so for numbers further afield you probably phone a directory enquiry number. For business premises, say for a hotel in London, you would probably use the Internet. Level of Detail/Conciseness: Information should be in a form that is short enough to allow for its examination and use. There should be no extraneous information. For example, it is very common practice to summarize financial data and present this information, both in the form of figures and by using a chart or graph. We would say that the graph is more concise than the tables of figures as there is little or no extraneous information in the graph or chart. Clearly there is a trade-off between level of detail and conciseness. Cost of Information: Information should be available within set cost levels that may vary dependent on situation. If costs are too high to obtain information an organization may decide to seek slightly less comprehensive information elsewhere. For example, an organization wants to commission a market survey on a new product. The survey could cost more than the forecast initial profit from the product. In that situation, the organization would probably decide that a less costly source of information should be used, even if it may give inferior information.