This book is to a large extent self-referential. In other words, the book itself demonstrates one of its themes: the distinction between raw data and useful information. In an early section, a very revealing statement is made: “It is often useful to distinguish data from information. Such a distinction is usually made on the state of usefulness of the element rather than its form or content. Thus, what is useful information in one operation may be raw data in another. . . . For purposes of the discussions in this book, the distinction between data and information is seen as unimportant and the words are used more or less interchangeably.”

Without dwelling in detail upon the philosophy of such a comment, it is clear to anyone reading this book that the authors applied this same premise to their own work. The result was a collection of raw data and useful information loosely organized into nine chapters and four appendices.

The first three chapters contain a set of article reprints which discuss high-level MIS issues on such topics as decision support systems, strategic planning, and project life cycle. This last topic is clearly out of place with the others.

The next four chapters present a set of descriptive models on four common MIS applications: Sales-Marketing, Manufacturing, Human Resources, and Financial. Each model consists of a general description of the business function, its management information requirements, sources of data, and information system outputs. These chapters are replete with physical reproductions of actual record layouts, reports, and other raw data just as if one had xeroxed the contents of an analyst’s working papers.

The last two chapters are reprints of articles on buying a computer and the future in MIS. A set of appendices, which are reprints on career planning, the Request for Proposal process, computer buying tips, and distributed processing, complete the book.

This book has no real connective tissue. It is loosely organized around its title theme. But material is presented at various levels: strategic, tactical, operational, and informative. The strategic level material and certain aspects of the operational level material are good introductory treatments. The bibliography at the end of each chapter is complete. On the other hand, a very disturbing drawback to readability lies in the authors’ decision to intermingle commercial display ads, reprints of journal articles, reproduction of computer generated reports, and the text itself. This presents to the reader a disturbing array of type fonts, sizes, quality, and formats. This raw data only adds bulk and detracts from the effectiveness of the text.

On balance, I can only marginally recommend this book. In ascending order of value, it can help (1) the general business community by providing a general view of this MIS function, (2) the MIS executive by providing a set of reprints and a good bibliography on strategic planning in MIS, and (3) the junior MIS analyst by providing some informative, basic models of the Sales-Marketing, Manufacturing, Human Resources, and Financial business areas to assist in systems analysis.