Degeneracy of MIS under the Conditions of Instability: A Mathematical Formulation

It has been always observed that the effectiveness of MIS as a support tool for management decisions degenerate after time of implementation, despite the substantial investments being made. This is true for organizations at the initial stages of MIS implementations, manual or computerized. A survey of a sample of middle to top managers in business and government institutions was made. A large ratio indicates that the MIS has lost its impact on the day-to-day operations, and even the response lag time expands sometimes indefinitely. The data indicates an infant mortality phenomenon of the bathtub model. Reasons may be monotonous nature of MIS delivery, irrelevance, irreverence, timeliness, and lack of adequate detail. All those reasons collaborate to create a degree of degeneracy. We investigate and model as a bathtub model the phenomenon of MIS degeneracy that inflicts the MIS systems and renders it ineffective. A degeneracy index is developed to identify the status of the MIS system and possible remedies to prevent the onset of total collapse of the system to the point of being useless.

Authors:

• Nazar Younis
• Raied Salman

Keywords:

• MIS
• management theory
• information technology
• information systems
• IS
• organizational environment
• organizations
• degeneracy
• organizational change.

References:

[1] Wilkins, D. J., The Bathtub Curve and product Failure Behavior, The
eMagazine for the reliability Professional, Issue 22, 2002.
[2] Samuel C. Certo Modern Management (9th Edition), Prentice Hall,
2002,ISBN:0130670898
[3] Ramstrom, D.O., "Toward the Information-Saturated Society," in
H.Leavitt, L. Pinfield & E. Webb (Eds.), Organizations of the Future:
Interaction with the External Environment, Praeger, New
York,1974,159-75.
[4] Josefek, Robert A., Kaufman, Robert J. , Dark Pockets and Decisin
Support: The information Technology Value Cycle in Efficient Markets,
Vol. 7, No. 3, 1997.
[5] Nelson, Wayne, Accelerated Testing: Statistical Models, Test Plans and
Data Analyses, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1990.
[6] Bruce Peterson, Using the Weibull Method for Determining
Environmental Stress Screening Duration, Vitrium Technology, Inc.
[7] Dudewicz, E.J., and Mishra, Satya N., Modern Mathematical Statistics,
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1988.
[8] Hirose, Hideo, Maximum Likelihood Estimation in the 3-parameter
Weibull Distribution - A Look through the Generalized Extreme-value
Distribution, IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation,
Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 43-55, February 1996.