B. Find the topic sentences of the paragraphs.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 628.

Information is fundamental to the operation of all management systems. As the work of Chandler and other business historians has shown, the development of the telegraph, telephone, and computer had a huge impact on the practice of management and the size and structure of the firm. Accounting systems are key components of firms' information systems. They collect, organize, and communicate financial information to top management and other parts of the organization.

Administrative hierarchies are founded on vertical information flows: the upward flow of information to the manager and the downward flow of instructions. The trend towards decentralization and informality in organizations rest upon two key aspects of increased information availability: information feedback to the individual on job performance, which has made self-monitoring possible, and information networking, which has allowed individuals to coordinate their activities voluntarily without hierarchical supervision. A central element of total quality management has been recognition that regular, real-time, performance feedback to employees permits them to take responsibility for quality control, reducing or eliminating the need for supervisors and quality controllers. During the past decade, corporate intranets, web-based information systems, and groupware have transformed organizations' capacity for decentralized coordination.