ut side of the system so as to bring activities in line with the target. In practice the target may be termed a norm, a budget, a standard, a performance or stock level and so on. The procedure outlined above, i.e. input - process - output - monitor and compare -adjustment, requires what is known as a feedback control loop and such a loop is a common feature of many aspects of MIS, for example, stock control, budgetary control, production control and so on. It will be realized that the basic system described is relatively mechanistic and is therefore not necessarily suitable for all facets of the organization’s activities. For example, there is the implicit assumption that the target or plan does not change and that conditions in the next control cycle will be similar to those in the past. Clearly, in volatile and uncertain conditions these assumptions are hardly likely to be correct. Where a self-regulating feedback system is not able to control a process adequately it may be feasible to use feed forward. This is where monitoring at some early stage of a system or process may indicate that an adjustment should be made at a later stage of the process, prior to the final output. Feed forward is not an automatic process and requires management intervention for it to operate successfully and consequently, it does not have the degree of 'automatic' control inherent in a feedback system. The Influence of Information Technology (IT) IT is a general expression covering computers, telecommunications and electronics and there is little doubt that IT is having a profound influence on all aspects of life, including organizations and MIS. Much of the expenditure on computers and IT incurred by organizations to date has been on relatively routine data processing applications, particularly in the accounting area, and in operational control systems such as stock control. Of course these are vital tasks but of themselves they do not constitute ma...
