Executive support in an open loop control environment

Discusses the design of executive support systems in an organizational environment based upon open loop control as opposed to closed loop control. This change in view supports a faster response to changes in the external environment but it requires that the executive process must increase its issue scanning and tracking activities. This research is based on the descriptive literature of executive tasks, management control, and successful strategic decision processes. It is also based on the normative literature of automatic control systems. These two sources are synthesized to provide some characteristics of an executive support systems described using an entity-relationship diagram and a data flow diagram. The author argues that the key characteristics of this support are that the data should be issue-oriented and the processes should be learning-oriented.<>