brady@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Joseph Brady) (09/25/90)
I am teaching an undergraduate course in management informations systems this semester. Students are mostly Business and Economics, mostly second semester sophomores or first semester juniors, mostly computer literate (from a prior B school course on computer literacy). For most this is their first rigorous treatment of management and organization principles, as well as the introduction to systems thinking. This is the first time I have taught this course. We use cases from the text to make the principles understandable (and less dry!).I would very much have like to have some sort of MIS simulation software that would let the student build a system, perturb one of the variables, and observe the effect on information flows within the firm. Important variables that the student would have to worry about in using the software (as in doing the cases) would involve the environment, management's objectives and standards, organization structure, the firm's computer sophistication, the state of the firm's production processes and so forth. In classic management games, the students are expected to manipulate variables like price, advertising, etc in order to maximize profits (or market share, or whatever). In this game the student would manipulate information processing variables in order to accomplish (or change) firm goals and outputs. Is anyone aware of such an MIS simulation? If so, please provide pointers. Many thanks.