Abstract
Understanding quantitative and qualitative differences of information and their influence on productivity is important for efficient information supply to office workers. This study shows a method to classify information into efficient and inefficient information based on the task processing model. If the procedure to process some kinds of information to obtain outputs is explicitly defined in the task processing model, such information is classified as efficient information. The others are classified as inefficient information. Inefficient information can be divided into related information and nonessential information, depending on its relation with the task processing model. An experiment was carried out using order quantity decision task of inventory management jobs with different sets of information given. Results show that efficient information reduces costs but increases processing time. Inefficient information increases costs when a high amount of efficient information is also supplied, but increases processing time when the efficient information supplied is low. Workers with poor performance tend to refer to inefficient information more often.
