FIT5094 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Rational Agent, Business Process
29 Jun 2018
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WEEK 2:
Understand what a manager is
1.DSS Users.
2.Most imp knowledge workers in an organisation.
3.They make sure all the business process activities coordinate and integrate so that they are
completed efficiently and effectively.
Mangers v/s IT Users
Managers task: decision making v/s IT Users: Insert, Update, Delete
No technical knowledge v/s SQL
Dashboards/ reports v/s RDBMS systems
Analyse and predict past and present records v/s no access to historical data
They need subject-oriented view to understand customer’s loyalty, cancellation prediction etc.
Managers reduce equivocality by defining or creating an answer rather than by learning the answer
from the collection of additional data.
Why do organisations process information?
1.To reduce task-related uncertainty and thereby attain an acceptable level of performance.
Uncertainty is "the difference between amount of information required to perform the task and the
amount of information already possessed by the organization.”.
2.To reduce equivocality. Equivocality means ambiguity, the existence of multiple and conflicting
interpretations about an organizational situation.
Draft and Lengel’s Info Requirements Framework:
What theories help us as System Analysts?
Normative theories: Purpose of the normative theories is to express, how people should behave when
they are confronting risky decisions. It gives advice on how to make the best decisions, given a set of
uncertain beliefs and a set of values.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Descriptive theories: The starting point for these theories has been in empirical experiments, where it
has been shown that people’s behaviour is inconsistent with the normative theories. It analyses how
existing, possibly irrational agents actually make decisions.
A DESCRIPTIVE claim is a claim that asserts that such-and-such IS the case. Whereas,
a NORMATIVE claim, on the other hand, is a claim that asserts that such-and-such OUGHT to be
the case. Normative claims make value judgments. Descriptive claims do not make value
judgments.
Examples of descriptive claims:
“The mug of coffee in front of me is now at room temperature.”
“I had toast and eggs for breakfast this morning.”
“Kevin is under six feet tall.”
These are all descriptive claims. They make no value judgments.
Examples of normative claims:
“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is a better movie than Star Wars Episode 1: The
Phantom Menace”.
“That was a really stupid thing to do.”
“If you wanted to pass that test you should have studied harder.”
“Your electrocardiogram test results are normal.”
“The State should not have the right to take the life of one of its citizens as punishment for a
crime.”
These are all normative claims. Each one of them expresses a value judgment of some kind.
Or
The two branches of decision theory typify the unending juxtaposition of the rational versus the
irrational. Normative decision theory models the most ideal decision for a given situation. In
normative theory, an actor is assumed to be fully rational. Normative decisions always try to find the
highest expected value outcome. A fully rational actor is capable of arriving at the highest expected
value with perfect accuracy. This is an ideal not often found in the real world. Practical application of
normative theory is thus aimed more at creating methodologies and software. By
contrast, descriptive decision theory is more about what will occur in a situation, not what should.
Descriptive decision theory takes into consideration outside factors that influence an actor’s decisions
toward less optimal, less rational ends.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
3. they make sure all the business process activities coordinate and integrate so that they are completed efficiently and effectively. Managers task: decision making v/s it users: insert, update, delete. Analyse and predict past and present records v/s no access to historical data. They need subject-oriented view to understand customer"s loyalty, cancellation prediction etc. Managers reduce equivocality by defining or creating an answer rather than by learning the answer from the collection of additional data. 1. to reduce task-related uncertainty and thereby attain an acceptable level of performance. Uncertainty is "the difference between amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organization. Equivocality means ambiguity, the existence of multiple and conflicting interpretations about an organizational situation. Normative theories: purpose of the normative theories is to express, how people should behave when they are confronting risky decisions.
