The advancement of production technology and the complexity of social activities have made management work increasingly inseparable from information. Information processing has become a major social activity in today's world. Everyone spends a lot of time recording, finding, and digesting information. Business managers spend eighty percent of their time communicating and processing information. In some developed industrial countries, the number of employees engaged in information processing accounts for more than half of the total number of employees. Such workers can be called "knowledge workers". Their main job is to produce and use information, including compiling documents, writing reports, analyzing information, making plans, etc.

Computers have now become an important tool for information processing. The use of computers for information processing began in 1954 when computers were used to process wages. It is now quite common for computers to handle various business tasks, such as hotel checkouts, airplane reservations, bank deposits, etc. Harnessing the information-processing power of computers can also expand the uses for which organizations possess information. The current and future challenge is to use the amazing power of computers to support knowledge work, including top management activities and decision-making.

The rapid growth of information work has made the application scope of computers wider and wider, and the functions of applications have also shifted from general data processing to decision-making support, which has led to the emergence of management information systems.