Investigating the generic information-seeking function of organisational decision-makers : Perspectives on improving organisational information systems

Abstract

The past decade has seen the emergence of a new paradigm in the corporate world where organisations emphasised connectivity as a means of exposing decision-makers to wider resources of information within and outside the organisation. Many organisations followed the initiatives of enhancing infrastructures, manipulating cultural shifts and emphasising managerial commitment for creating pools and networks of knowledge. However, the concept of connectivity is not merely presenting people with the data, but more importantly, to create environments where people can seek information efficiently. This paradigm has therefore caused a shift in the function of information systems in organisations. They have to be now assessed in relation to how they underpin people's information-seeking activities within the context of their organisational environment.

This research project used interpretative research methods to investigate the nature of people's information-seeking activities at two culturally contrasting organisations.

Outcomes of this research project provide insights into phenomena associated with people's information-seeking function, and show how they depend on the organisational context that is defined partly by information systems. It suggests that information-seeking is not just searching for data. The inefficiencies inherent in both people and their environments can bring opaqueness into people's data, which they need to avoid or eliminate as part of seeking information. This seems to have made information-seeking a two-tier process consisting of a primary process of searching and interpreting data and auxiliary process of avoiding and eliminating opaqueness in data. Based on this view, this research suggests that organisational information systems operate naturally as implicit dual-mechanisms to underpin the above two-tier process, and that improvements to information systems should concern maintaining the balance in these dual-mechanisms.

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