Coming to Grips with the Management of Information: A Classroom Exercise

Managers and decision makers often claim to be starved for good information while they are also victims of “information overload.” The challenge for most decision makers in the early 21st century is the tsunami of data and information received from a multitude of internal and external sources that must be managed on an almost constant basis. The difficulty is distinguishing the good information from the bad, and in developing criteria to assist in this process. This experiential exercise has been used for undergraduate, graduate, MBA, and management training and development courses. The exercise introduces participants to some of the basic concepts about information and the importance of managing information as a resource. It addresses evaluating information on the basis of its quality (i.e., accuracy), quantity, timeliness, and relevance. In addition, the exercise helps participants to recognize the different information needs of managers in different functional areas of the organization as well as at different levels within the organization. This paper provides the reader with the instructions and materials to use this exercise in the classroom setting and discusses related examples from business

Information Systems and Health Care VII - When Success Results in Failure: The Challenge of Extending the IT Infrastructure to Support Organ Procurement and Transplantation

Xpedite was a computer-based information system developed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) to enhance organ procurement and placement from cadavers. Using state-of-the-art development approaches and technology at the time of its development, Xpedite was built around Lotus Notes, facsimile machines, and alphanumeric pagers. It was developed to integrate and streamline the collection, transfer, and exchange of data on available organs more fully. The concept was to shorten the time from organ availability (i.e., donor death) to transplant, thus reducing organ wastage. Xpedite met design and operational performance goals (i.e., a reduction in placement times and data errors), yet its operation was terminated after barely twenty-four months of operation. Adoption of the new technology throughout the transplant community was limited due to inexperience with integrated information technology systems and the resistance to change that accompanied Xpedite\u27s launch. The individual and organizational resistance was a surprise to UNOS. The technical and organizational lessons learned from this experience helped UNOS with developing subsequent information technology infrastructure components. The complexity of the technology support environment and low levels of user adoption for Xpedite ultimately led to an evolution beyond this tool, resulting in an Internet-based environment that would be more robust, easier to maintain, and better able to support user needs

Disability support services 2005–06 - national data on services provided under the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement

This report presents information on disability services collected from over 9,000 service outlets throughout Australia, which are funded under an agreement between the Australian and state/territory governments. These services aim to improve the quality of life of people with disability by providing support and assistance across a range of life activities. The report profiles the people with disability who use the services, the types of services they use and the supports they need (including information on their informal carers). Most information presented in this report is derived from the 2005&ndash;06 Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement National Minimum Data Set (CSTDA NMDS) collection.<br /

The Impact of Situational Factors On Information System (Is) Managerial Leader Behaviors: What Information Systems Employees Want

Information systems leadership has evolved dramatically over the past 40 years. Early in the era of computing most attention was focused on the technical skills of IS managers. As IS has become ubiquitous in our organizations and increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, the need for a broader approach to IS management has emerged with an increasing emphasis on non-technical skills in business practices and an appreciation of the impact of organizational culture. Further, information systems managers increasingly find themselves in crisis situations that may require different leadership skills to successfully navigate. These crises may be caused by the physical destruction of computer hardware, the loss of critically sensitive data, sophisticated hacking of company computers, or a coding error in a mission critical software program. The research on managerial leadership in crisis situations is relatively sparse; however, the research on managerial leadership behaviors for the information systems sector is essentially nonexistent. This research study attempts to fill that gap, finding that there are a few desired managerial leadership behaviors in common between the information systems group and other studied groups, as well as differences and desired shifts in priorities

Health impacts of pesticide exposure in a cohort of outdoor workers.

We compared mortality of 1,999 outdoor staff working as part of an insecticide application program during 1935-1996 with that of 1,984 outdoor workers not occupationally exposed to insecticides, and with the Australian population. Surviving subjects also completed a morbidity questionnaire. Mortality was significantly higher in both exposed and control subjects compared with the Australian population. The major cause was mortality from smoking-related diseases. Mortality was also significantly increased in exposed subjects for a number of conditions that do not appear to be the result of smoking patterns. Compared with the general Australian population, mortality over the total study period was increased for asthma [standardized mortality ratio (SMR) = 3.45; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.39-7.10] and for diabetes (SMR = 3.57; 95% CI, 1.16-8.32 for subjects working < 5 years). Mortality from pancreatic cancer was more frequent in subjects exposed to 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane (SMR = 5.27; 95% CI, 1.09-15.40 for subjects working < 3 years). Compared with the control population, mortality from leukemia was increased in subjects working with more modern chemicals (standardized incidence ratio = 20.90; 95% CI, 1.54-284.41 for myeloid leukemia in the highest exposure group). There was also an increase in self-reported chronic illness and asthma, and lower neuropsychologic functioning scores among surviving exposed subjects when compared with controls. Diabetes was reported more commonly by subjects reporting occupational use of herbicides. These findings lend weight to other studies suggesting an association between adverse health effects and exposure to pesticides

Walrasian and Marshallian Stability: An Application to the Australian Pig industry

The Global Correspondence Principle of Samuelson states that global comparative static results hold even in the absence of an initial stable equilibrium. This principle has been applied in recent studies of international trade with variable returns to scale to resolve paradoxical results with respect to the Rybczynski and Stolper-Samuelson theorems. Takayama and Ide have shown that the principle may only apply if the initial equilibrium is Marshallian stable. This has implications for economic forecasting, in that forecasts of prices and quantities may only be valid in the presence of Marshallian stability. We estimate a Vector Error correction Model of the Australian pig industry and examine the stability of the model in both the Walrasian and Marshallian sense. We find that prior to the introduction of imports in 1990, the farm gate market was characterised by both Walrasian and Marshallian stability and after 1990 it was unstable in both senses. This suggests that market forecasts since 1990 need to be viewed with more than the usual caution

Digital Hydrography Underestimates Stream Length and Leads to Underestimates of Trout Population Size

Stream length is measured for many fisheries management applications. Characteristics of populations and habitats measured at field sites are commonly generalized to unsampled areas using estimates of stream length or stream network length. There are many ways to measure stream length, but map-based stream length measurements are commonly used in fisheries applications even though they are known to be biased. We evaluated how length of headwater streams in Arizona may be underestimated by the National Hydrography Dataset and how that bias influences streamwide abundance estimates for adult Apache Trout Oncorhynchus apache. As expected, stream lengths measured using National Hydrography Dataset flowlines underestimated true length revealed by National Agricultural Imagery Program imagery on average 11.1% (SD = 4.1%), and this bias was higher in meadow versus forested habitats. The observed bias led to streamwide estimates of adult Apache Trout abundance that were only 88% on average (SD = 5%) of those made with more realistic imagery-based stream measurements. As we have shown, high-resolution imagery, now widely available, can be used to assess and quantify stream length bias, and we conclude that it is important to assess whether this bias has the potential to negatively impact important fishery management decisions

How About Tomorrow? Optimal Procrastination and the Implications for Delay in Submitting to Conferences

In these times of academic stress in which one's time budget is a binding constraint, procrastination and delay may be an optimal response to deadlines imposed by conference organizers. We formulate a model of optimal procrastination using optimal stopping theory. Whilst the date of the conference is known and the "soft" deadline is also known by the authors of the paper, the "hard" deadline for the publication of the conference proceedings and program is only known by the organizers. Organizers possess a lower and upper limit on the numbers of participants determined by their budget and the capacity of the conference venue. The authors wold like to submit papers as late as possible subject to these constraints. The question this paper attempts to address is "What is the optimal period of procrastination for the authors?

Disability and disability services

This chapter provides a profile of people who are at various points on this disability continuum, but with an emphasis on those facing more severe limitations. Information is presented on both mainstream and sector-specific service use, and the outcomes associated with the use of these services. The focus in this chapter is on people aged under 65 years.<br /

Cryptic species and independent origins of allochronic populations within a seabird species complex (Hydrobates spp.)

Humans are inherently biased towards naming species based on morphological differences, which can lead to reproductively isolated species being mistakenly classified as one if they are morphologically similar. Recognising cryptic diversity is needed to understand drivers of speciation fully, and for accurate estimates of global biodiversity and assessments for conservation. We investigated cryptic species across the range of band-rumped storm-petrels (Hydrobates spp.): highly pelagic, nocturnal seabirds that breed on tropical and sub-tropical islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In many breeding colonies, band-rumped storm-petrels have sympatric but temporally isolated (allochronic) populations; we sampled all breeding locations and allochronic populations. Using mitochondrial control region sequences from 754 birds, cytochrome b sequences from 69 birds, and reduced representation sequencing of the nuclear genomes of 133 birds, we uncovered high levels of genetic structuring. Population genomic analyses revealed up to seven unique clusters, and phylogenomic reconstruction showed that these represent seven monophyletic groups. We uncovered up to six independent breeding season switches across the phylogeny, spanning the continuum from genetically undifferentiated temporal populations to full allochronic species. Thus, band-rumped storm-petrels encompass multiple cryptic species, with non-geographic barriers potentially comprising strong barriers to gene flow