General Model of a Human as an Information Processor

 

A manager or a decision maker uses his sensory receptors, normally eyes and ears, to pick up information and transmit them to brain for processing and storage. The result of this processing will be a response which may be a decision, and action or at least recognition of the event for future use.  Hence, a manager can be said to be an information processor.

 

While processing the information for a managerial response, the manager also uses accumulated knowledge from memory. The capacity of a manager to accept and process inputs to produce output is variable and limited. That is why it is observed that all the managers of the same level do not accept or absorb all the inputs which the information may provide.

 

The limitation arises sometimes on account of the information overload which is external to the manager. This is a case of too much or extra information creating a problem for the user of the information to sort out the relevant from the irrelevant or the appropriate from the inappropriate. The manager in such a situation adopts the method of filtering the information.

 

Filtering is a process whereby a manager selectively accepts that much input, which his mental ability can manage to process.

 

The filtering process blocks the unwanted or the inconsistent data or the data which does not match the frame of reference. An inexperienced manager or a less knowledgeable manager through filtering may omit data, distort data responses and, therefore, may draw incorrect inferences.

 

The information processor establishes the filters based on experience, knowledge and know-how. The choice of filters may be changed due to stress, urgency of decision making and the confidence in a particular method of decision making. Many a times a processor is required to perceive process and evaluate probabilistic information. The processor may be deficient in the intuitive understanding of the information, in the ability to identify the correlation and the causality, and in the capability for integrating the information.