Introduction: People use the Internet for a wide array of purposes. For example, among the most popular things that people do on the Internet are emailing their friends, playing games, shopping at sites such as Amazon.com, checking out new movie and music sites, and getting the latest news, weather, and sports updates. Managers, similarly, often use the Internet to obtain information that they subsequently use to make decisions and run their organizations. This exercise will help you better understand how to do this.
Internet Assignment: This chapter identified a number of contemporary organizational and environmental challenges faced by managers today. For example, among those discussed are workforce diversity, information technology, new ways of organizing, globalization, social responsibility, quality, and productivity. Select one of these challenges that most interests you. Assume that you are a manager facing a specific problem or opportunity in the area you have selected; or perhaps you just want to learn more about the topic for your own general purposes. Search the Internet to locate several different web sites that seem most valuable and relevant for your particular topic.
Follow-up: Select the three sites that seem to be especially useful and relevant. Describe the strengths and weaknesses of each. Finally, respond to the following instructions and/or questions:
- How confident would you be in making a critical decision based on the information you found on the Internet? Why?
- Why might some topics have more Internet resources than others?
- What other information sources might be important for learning more about your topic (in addition to the Internet)?
