ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the tools executives require to generate the information they need. And it deals with the concepts underlying those tools. Some of the tools have been around for a long time, but rarely, if ever, have they been focused on the task of managing a business. We may have gone furthest in redesigning both business and information in the most traditional of our information systems: accounting. First-year accounting students are taught that the balance sheet portrays the liquidation value of the enterprise and provides creditors with worst-case information. To do that requires information that enables executives to make informed judgments. It requires four sets of diagnostic tools: foundation information, productivity information, competence information, and information about the allocation of scarce resources. An adequate information system has to include information that makes executives question that assumption. Perhaps the most popular provider of the outside-information system, especially for smaller enterprises, will be the “inside outsider,” the independent consultant.
