FUNCTIONING OF AUTONOMOUS GROUPS - THE ROLE OF DELAYED INFORMATION

Some elements of the systems approach to the analysis of an informatio n flow in a dynamic environment are proposed. The resulting control sy stem is designed to enable a manager to structure an information excha nge taking into account the effects of delay. It matches very frequent real-life situations in which the following should be answered: 'What is better, complete information but heavily delayed or incomplete inf ormation less delayed?' The paper is primarily concerned with the math ematical representation of the functioning of autonomous groups, i.e. groups which themselves determine information requirements, flow and p rocessing. Emphasis is placed on the role of delay in an evaluation of information flow.