Information for Managerial Decision-Making in Healthcare : Suggest steps to achieve abalance between information insufficiency and information overload : Literature review

Résumé

The diversity of information flows existing in organizations, the considerable proportions that they can take and above all the importance of remaining open to them, expose Managers to a risk of information overload. Faced with this problematic, we set out to answer the following two questions: 1) Are these flows easily manageable ? 2) Is it possible to achieve a fair balance between information insufficiency and overload ?

To this end, we conducted a multidisciplinary literature review. The result shows that these information flows are rich, diversified and almost unmanageable, and that the risk of overload is very real. Also, a precise measurement of this informational balance is doubly difficult : mainly because we are in an area where quality predominates and also because the capacity of Managers to process information, while limited, remains variable between people.

Furthermore, we propose a three-steps approach to tend towards this “balance”: Become aware, on a daily basis, of the potential risk of information overload and be attentive to its warning signs; Give priority to the quality of information; and above all develop the Managerial skill of “detection of relevant information”.