Information Technology as an Agent of Change

The internet and the technologies of telecommunications in general have also created new ways for businesses to compete, and to extend themselves past once-insurmountable boundaries.

Among other uses, the Internet has allowed businesses to compete in:

Cost efficiencies mass customization extending themselves to global markets Marketing and sales have also been revolutionized, as information technology allows such phenomena as user-customized pricing, native language front-end displays and multi-currency e-commerce, with a centralized transactional database managing the complexity behind the scenes.

Social and workplace trends caused by business use of information technology include an increase of telecommuting and the prevalence of so-called “knowledge work”, where the intellectual and technical sophistication and specialized knowledge of workers becomes a valuable asset. Additionally, the facilitation of so-called “virtual organizations” consisting of key executive personnel and outsourcing of most operational business functions, as well as the spread of free-agency among highly-skilled IT specialists with project-based rather than organization-based loyalty, have occurred as a direct result of our adoption of information systems and telecommunications technology into the workplace.

There are also unique and problematic issues with IT in terms of its potential impact upon our notions of individual privacy, and the very real concerns of information security. Equally, the issues which began with the first industrial revolution have only been magnified.

Expert systems and sophisticated robotics, phenomenal data analysis capabilities, and other advantages which technology has facilitated, make concerns with automation an issue of major debate, threatening job security and even the nature of employment of “human capital”.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE INFORMATION AGE:

The Social Responsibility in the Information Age track includes all aspects of social issues that are impacted by information technology affecting organizations and inter-organizational structures. This track provides an outlet for scholarship in the changes information resource management, information technology, and information systems have effected on society. The term “society” here refers to the world at large, nations, cultures within nations, and interaction among peoples.

The scholarship examines who is affected, why, how, and where, and what effects those changes make in society. The topics in the track are expected to be varied. This would include the conceptualization of specific social issues and their associated constructs, proposed designs and infrastructures, empirical validation of social models, and case studies illustrating socialization success and failures.

Precisely, Reflections following a new report from the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility. “The computer revolution…is not merely technological and financial; it is fundamentally social and ethical” http://www.InfosDemocracy.com

Information Partnerships for the Intelligent Organization

Information and information skills have a tendency to become fragmented in the organization as the organization specializes in its functions. Traditionally, librarians would look after the organization’s collection of printed information, record managers would maintain internal files and documents, while information technologists would design and build computer-based systems to process operational data. The information user, the raison d’être for all this flurry of information activity, is often only episodically or peripherally involved, and a gap results between their real information needs for decision making and the information captured and delivered through the organization’s information systems and services.

The intelligent organization breaks away from this functional fragmentation and forges new partnerships that bring together the organization’s capabilities to create and use knowledge, organize knowledge, and build infrastructures that enable the effective management of knowledge. At the heart of the intelligent organization are three groups of experts who need to work together as teams of knowledge partners: the domain experts; the information experts; and the information technology experts (Table 2).

The domain experts are the individuals in the organization who are personally engaged in the act of creating and using knowledge: the operators, professionals, technologists, managers, and many others. The domain experts possess and apply the tacit knowledge, rule-based knowledge and background knowledge that we have discussed earlier in their day-to-day work, interpreting situations, solving problems, and making decisions. The knowledge and expertise they have is specialized and focused on the organization’s domain of activity.

Through their coordinated effort the organization as a whole performs its role and attains its goals. Through their knowledge creation and use, the organization learns, makes discoveries, creates innovations, and undergoes adaptation. The information experts are the individuals in the organization who have the skills, training and know-how to organize knowledge into systems and structures that facilitate the productive use of information and knowledge resources. They include librarians, records managers, archivists, and other information specialists.

In organizing knowledge, their tasks encompass the representation of the various kinds of organizational information; developing methods and systems of structuring and accessing information; information distribution and delivery; amplifying the usefulness and value of information; information storage and retrieval; and so on.

Their general focus is to enhance the accessibility and quality of information so that the organization will have an enlightened view of itself and its environment. The information experts design and develop information products and services that promote learning and awareness; they preserve the organization’s memory to provide the continuity and context for action and interpretation.

The information technology experts are the individuals in the organization who have the specialized expertise to fashion the information infrastructure of the organization. The information technology experts include the system analysts, system designers, software engineers, programmers, data administrators, network managers, and other specialists who develop computer-based information systems and networks. Their general focus is to establish and maintain information infrastructures that models the flow and transaction of information, and accelerates the processing of data and communication of messages.

The information technology experts build applications, databases, networks that allow the organization to do its work with accuracy, reliability, and speed. In the intelligent organization, the knowledge of the three groups of domain experts, information experts, and IT experts congeal into a superstructure for organizational learning and growth.

In order to work together in teams of domain experts, information experts, and information technology experts, each of them will need to re-orientate its traditional mindset respectively.

Users as domain experts will need to separate the management of information from the management of information technology. Information technology in most cases has been heavily managed, whereas the management of information processes—identifying needs, acquiring information, organizing and storing information, developing information products and services, distributing information, and using information—has been largely neglected. Users need to understand that the goals and principles of information management are quite different from the objectives and methods of information technology management.

Users could participate fully in these information processes, not just as end-consumers of information products or services, but as active agents in every activity of the information management cycle, especially in clarifying information needs, collecting information, sharing information, and transforming raw data into useable information.

Users should share the responsibility of identifying and communicating their information needs, and not abdicate this work completely to the information or information technology experts. The most valuable information sources in the organization are the people themselves, and they should participate actively in an organization wide information collection and information sharing network.

IT experts are the most prominent group in today’s technology-dominated environment. The management of information technology has remained in the media’s spotlight for many years now, with no signs of diminishing interest. Academics, businesses, consultants, and government all continue to extol the strategic application of information technology. IT experts have indeed become proficient at fashioning computer-based information systems that dramatically increase operational efficiency and task productivity.

At the same time, the very same systems that are so remarkable for their speed and throughput are equally well known for their inability to satisfy the information needs of the decision makers. By representing and manipulating information at the data-element level, many systems do not provide more holistic information about processes, subject areas, or even documentation matters.

Thus, an information system that processes vast numbers of transactions per minute may be unable to answer key questions like how long does the company take to develop new products, what is the firm’s current market share, and what is the turnaround time for a customer order. Computer-based information systems concentrate on formal, structured, internal data, leaving out the informal, unstructured, external information that most decision makers require.

Their operating criterion is efficiency over flexibility, and they are designed to optimize resource utilization rather than to simplify knowledge discovery or problem solving. IT experts need to move the user to the center of their focus—develop a behavior-based, process-oriented understanding of the information user in terms of their needs and information use dispositions. People in organizations are not content with structured transactional data; they also want information technology to simplify the use of the informal, unstructured information that forms the bulk of the organization’s information resources. http://www.InfosDemocracy.com

Information Use

Information use is a dynamic, interactive social process of inquiry that may result in the making of meaning or the making of decisions. The inquiry cycles between consideration of parts and the whole, and between practical details and general assumptions. Participants clarify and challenge each other’s representations and beliefs. Choices may be made by personal intuition, political advocacy, as well as by rational analysis.

Managers as information users, for example, work in an environment that has been described as information ally overloaded, socially constrained, and politically laden. As new information is received and as the manager reflects and acts on the problem situation, the perception of the situation changes, giving rise to new uncertainties. The problem situation is redefined, the manager seeks new information, and the cycle iterates until the problem is considered resolved in the manager’s mind.

The organization’s information structures and processes will have to be as open, flexible, and vigorous as the processes of inquiry and decision making they support. Information managers and specialists should be participants in decision processes so that they have a first-hand understanding of the information needs that emerge as the process unfolds and the extent that these needs are satisfied.

In organizational learning, information is used by individuals to create knowledge, knowledge not just in the sense of data and facts, but knowledge in the form of representations that provide meaning and context for purposive action.

People in organizations therefore behave as sense makers who use information in action (Weick 1979), and information use becomes a hermeneutic process of inquiry, in which understanding is realized through interpretation and dialogue (Winograd and Flores 1987, Boland et al 1994). The theory of hermeneutics (Gadamer 1975) describes the interpretive process by which an individual gives meaning to organizational experience, while the theory of inquiring systems (Churchman 1971) describes how a community of inquirers builds and test knowledge through dialogue.

The hermeneutic interpretive process is interplay of the part and the whole in a hermeneutic circle (Gadamer 1975): we depend on our comprehension of the whole to identify and understand the parts, but at the same time, we depend on our knowledge of the parts to validate our comprehension of the whole (Boland et al 1994). As a result, we continually move back and forth between theory and details, and between vision and specifics, in our attempt to construct interpretations.

How is the validity of these interpretations to be judged? Churchman (1971) portrays human inquirers as producers of knowledge who test their interpretations through dialogue and debate. In a community of inquirers, individuals see the same situation through different weltanschauung shaped by their beliefs and values. Inquiry then proceeds by vigorous debate as thesis and antithesis confront each other.

The inquiry changes its direction and style frequently as new concepts and elements are introduced from outside the presently accept ways of understanding a situation. Like the hermeneutic circle, there is constant movement between views of a situation that simplify and views that complicate, between close-up examination of details and reflection about general assumptions, categories and concepts (Boland et al 1994).

Organizational information continuously vacillates between the fine-grained and the broad-brushed, between components and the whole, between immediate instances and general policies. In the act of knowledge creation, organizational information weaves through layers of tacit, rule-based, and background knowledge that stitch the cognitive fabric of the organization.

In summary, information use for the making of meaning and understanding requires information processes and methods that provide for a high degree of flexibility in information representation and that facilitate the vigorous exchange and evaluation of multiple representations among individuals. Labeling or naming of concepts and categories has to be relevant to the users’ interpretive discourse, and be flexible and easy to change. Information is needed about specific events and instances as well as about new theories and frameworks that dispute current norms and beliefs. Assumptions made should be surfaced for review. Information is to be shared easily but without loss of cognitive richness.

Through the exchange and interpretation of information, the organization blends its tacit and explicit knowledge to extract new meanings for action.  http://www.InfosDemocracy.com

Information Products and Services

In developing information products and services, the objective is not only to provide information that is relevant to the users’ areas of interest, but also to provide information in a form that increases their usability.

 In other words, information products and services should deliver and present information so that their content, format, orientation, and other attributes address the situational requirements which affect the resolution of the problem or class of problems. This represents a value-added approach to the design of information products and services. The potential usefulness of messages is enhanced by increasing their ease of use, reducing noise, improving data quality, adapting the information to increase its pertinence, and saving the user time and money. Information services need to be constantly innovating, in a continual effort to move closer to satisfying the many facets of the users’ information needs.

To stay well-informed and build up its knowledge base, the intelligent organization needs to feed on a balanced diet of high quality information supplied through a varied menu of information products and services. These products and services should cover a range of time horizons and provide different levels of focus or detail (Fig. 3). Some information products disseminate urgent news that require immediate attention; others report developments that would take time to unfurl over the short term; while others still peer into the more distant future. For each of these time horizons, the information provided may be sharply focused; describing particular events, objects or organizations; or the information may be general and broad, surveying the terrain on which the organization’s future will make its course.

The guiding principle is that each information product must be of value to the end user. Information products or services should not rely only on information that happens to arrive in ‘convenient’ packages—where it adds value to the user, incoming information may have to be reassembled, summarized, cross-referenced, and compared, and so on.

Fig. 3: A Topology of Information Products and Services

Users want information not just to give answers to questions (‘what is happening here?’) but also to lead to solutions for problems (‘what can we do about this?’). Moving from questions to problems means moving from a subject-based orientation in which knowing is a sufficient end state to an action orientation in which information is being used to formulate decisions and behaviors. To be relevant and consequential, information products and services should therefore be designed to address not only the subject matter of the problem but also the specific contingencies that affect the resolution of each problem or each class of problems. 

Information Distribution

The purpose of distributing information is to encourage the sharing of information. A wider distribution of information promotes more widespread and more frequent learning, makes the retrieval of relevant information more likely, and allows new insights to be created by relating disparate items of information. The delivery of information should be done through vehicles and in formats that dovetail well with the work habits and preferences of the users.

The separation between information provider and information user should be dissolved: both ought to collaborate as partners in the dissemination and value-adding of information to help ensure that the best information is seen by the right persons in the organization. To encourage users to be active participants, it should be made easy for them to comment on, evaluate, and re-direct the information they have received.

How might information distribution be designed to induce the creation of new knowledge? One answer may be to dismantle the wall between information providers and end users, to co-opt users themselves into the distribution network as active, contributing participants. For a model of how this could work, we might look at a hugely popular form of information sharing—Usenet newsgroups on the Internet.

In newsgroups, information is posted onto what is essentially an electronic bulletin board that is seen by everyone in the group. Each article has a subject heading, and users can scan these titles quickly to pick out items to read. After reading, users themselves participate by posting new messages that answer questions, add commentary, suggest interpretations, and so on. Related messages are sewn together into threads of discussions about particular topics. From time to time, replies and discussion threads may be summarized and then re-posted.

 It is tempting to consider a similar model for organizational information dissemination. New items are given informative subject titles and broadcast promptly. Users scan, read, and discuss each other’s messages. Multiple perspectives and representations are likely to emerge that reflect users’ different experiences and knowledge. Discussion threads may then be summarized by a user or moderator with special knowledge or interest. Information digests of the discussion threads may be posted electronically, or packaged into information products in their own right. Electronic exchanges may occasionally lead to face-to-face focus group discussions or the forming of special interest groups.

The electronic bulletin board serves as the shared collaboration space in which participants actively create shared understandings (Schrage 1990).

Unlike meetings and formal gatherings, the electronic collaborative space and its tools are interactive and responsive, many participants have equal and voluntary access, conversations are spontaneous, multiple conversations develop in parallel, and the focus is on the content of the messages on the communal space rather than a competition of personal egos. As a medium for information distribution and sharing, well managed discussion groups of motivated users seem capable of adding considerable depth to the knowledge base of the organization. http://www.InfosDemocracy.com