Introduction: External Information for Managers as Practitioners and Managers as Students

Reasons for Using External Information Managers are accustomed to collecting, sifting, handling and giving out information. Much of this information is generated within the organisation, and is specific to that organisation's business and clients or customers. Many queries or management research problems will be answered by looking first at this internal data. But what about the other side of the coin — external information? There are many sources of information whether informal or formal — published sources from which managers can extract material which is useful and perhaps essential to themselves and to their organisation. External and internal information are complementary. Although many decisions will be made primarily on the basis of organisational data, there will be many decisions to which external developments and the experiences of others can beneficially be applied. Information from outside the organisation can aid planning and even the solution of specific problems. For example, a warehousing and distribution problem comparable to one currently experienced in the organisation may have been solved satisfactorily by a different company and reported in a trade journal. In such a case, timely information can prevent duplication of effort. Avoiding duplication of effort becomes particularly important when research and development work is undertaken. Whether this involves a large scale R&D effort to produce and test a new product or a smaller departmental research project, looking at published information sources to check that similar or relevant work has not already been reported is an essential preliminary.