Organization and Information Management.

Information management coursework

What is Information Management? A Guide for First Year Undergraduates

The Second Part: Organization and Information Management

Introduction:

In the modern society, the information management and organizations have very close relationships. It can be seen not only from the changes of the organizational structures in the companies and organizations, but also from the processes of information transferring within the organizations. In addition, about the information management cycle, we should have a clear distinction between the ideal cycle in an organization and the real world. Moreover, as the information managers who control many important parts of information transferring, they act the very important roles in the information management cycle. It is really very necessary for us to consider the intelligent organizations and information management cycle very carefully.

The intelligent Organization:

Most of our actions and decisions in our daily life depend on the complex factors and elements instead of the single or orderly ones, and so do the organizations in the modern society. In the organizations, the actions and decisions appear from the ecology of information processes. Survivability of the intelligent organization is dependent on the organization’s ability to process information about the environment, and to turn this information into knowledge that enables it to adapt effectively to external change. (Choo, 2002: 2)

Nowadays, the organizations share many features with living biological systems, and most of it has both close relationships to the environment that provided useful resources and information, and also the knowledge that increase the use of the intellectual capital of organization. Firstly, all the elements of the external environment give great influences to the organizations. Therefore, in the information view of the environment, information managers collect information that can preserve or variate organizational structures and processes from the environment. Furthermore, the extent of the organization dependent on others that is the focus of the resources in the environment. In addition, environment can also be seen as a source of variation, which focuses on the population or species instead of the individual system. Secondly, in business organizations, information can be seen as the news when it’s a first appearance, most of the information can reduce the uncertainty and problems of the organizations; however, on the other hand, they should face the information overload. Therefore, it’s very necessary for the information managers to identify how to use that knowledge to collect and manage the information.

In the following, I would like to give the as an example to explain the intelligent organizations more clearly. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. (1) From lots of characters and elements of WTO, we could know that WTO is really a typical open system and organization in the world. In addition, because the close relationships between the organization and environments, all the elements of the external environment give great influences to the organization. As the organization, which is accounting for over 97% of world trade in the world today, the WTO has more than 140 members, and most of them have the negotiated memberships. (2)

Organizational intelligence in terms of the gathering, processing, interpreting, and communicating of information needed in decision making process (Wilensky 1967) However, if the information overload, it may cause a lot of other problems to the intelligence organization. Because too many books, articles and websites are provided, and it’s easy for us to get confused and misleading. This problem may often affect the WTO, because this organization always gets so many suggestions and requirements from its members day-to-day, and to deal with that information. Therefore, to avoid the information overload is really a very hard and difficult work.

Overall, the intelligent organization can ...

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Overall, the intelligent organization can be seen as a holistic approach, which include the tacit, rule-based and background knowledge very successfully in the whole organization. (Choo, 2002: 12)

Information Management Cycle:

The information management cycle (the ideal one)

This graph shows an information management cycle concluded by Choo, and the Adaptive Behaviour step and the following six stages are not only illustrating the transferring processes of information in the organizations step by step, but it also express the conceptualisation of information management as a whole.

Information Needs

In general, the information needs can be seen as the requirements of the inputs and data in the organizations, and majority of the information needs are depend on the requirements of the information use. As the information managers in the organizations, they should consider some questions, so that they can use and collect the information successfully. For instance, what information is needed, why is the information needed and how it will be used. In addition, to increase the ranges of the useful information not only determined by the interests and needs of the users, but also influence by the values of those information. Therefore, it is very difficult to consider and collect the true needs within the organizations.

Information acquisition

Information acquisition is driven by information needs, and must adequately address these needs. (Choo, 2002, 24) In this process, the information always be fragmented into several parts within the organisation, and different departments will choose the useful one. Moreover, internal and external environment often give some great influences to information acquisition.

Information Organization and Storage

The objective of information organization and storage is to create an organizational memory, and staff in the organization can get knowledge and experiences from that information in the memory very easily and quickly. Furthermore, the information organization and storage is also related to the information technology and management policies in the ideal information management cycle, and they are also the important figures in the real organization.

Information Products and Services

The next step of the information management cycle is the information products and services. In this stage, the different user groups always have the different information needs, but it does not as the information needs which pay more attention to the information itself, the information products and services always emphasize the actions that solve those informational problems within the organizations. In addition, information products and services have to add value by enhancing the quality of the information and improving the fit between the information and the needs or preferences of the users. (Choo, 2002,25)

Information distribution

If the organizations want to distribute the information they got, first of all, they should make an obvious goal, which described how to widen the sharing of the information, because the main objective of the information distribution is to improve and promote the sharing of the information, so that the information managers should pay more attention to use their insight and knowledge to solve the difficult problems and situations.

Information use

Organization information is a very complex factor within the organizations, so if the organizations want to use and manage the information reasonably, they should use high level of knowledge related to the information. In the act of knowledge creation, organizational information is transformed into tacit, rule-based, and cultural knowledge that constitute the cognitive fabric of the organization. (Choo, 2002: 45) Therefore, information use is a kind of process which making of meaning and understanding of information, and also have the high degree of flexibility in information representation. Moreover, it is also very useful for making decisions of the organizations.

However, in the modern society, this cycle can just seen as a ideal one, because most of the organizations in the world cannot manage the information step by step, they may very weak in dealing with some parts or even ignore some parts when they are managing those information.

Information management cycle and the WTO

In the following, I would like to discuss the information management cycle of the World Trade Organization as the example to analyse the six closely related activities of the information management cycle in the real world. In addition, a structure chart of the WTO will be shown in the following first of all.

The structure chart of the World Trade Organization

Information Needs of the WTO

In the identification of information needs activity of WTO, we can find that the members of WTO are quite different, because they are not only distributed in the different areas in the world, but they also have obvious different trade levels between the developed and developing countries. It’s very difficult for the organization to collect and update the useful information, and also make decisions to solve their problems. However, the organization always changes strategies as the volatility of the whole environment, and all the decisions are made by the entire membership. A majority vote is also possible but it has never been used in the WTO, and was extremely rare under the WTO’s predecessor, GATT. The WTO’s agreements have been ratified in all members’ parliaments, (3) so that they may collect the necessary information with the same goals and proposes to make sense of situation. For example, numerous specialized committees, working groups and working parties deal with the individual agreements and other areas such as the environment, development, membership applications and regional trade agreements. (4)

Information acquisition of the WTO

Within the WTO, a lot of important decisions are discussed in the meetings and conferences, and the Secretariat always supply technical support for the various councils and committees and the ministerial conferences, to provide technical assistance for developing countries, to analyse world trade, and to explain WTO affairs to the public and media. As an information manager in the company, he also provides some forms of legal assistance in the dispute settlement process and advises governments wishing to become members of the WTO. (5) Therefore, it’s easy for them to get information from the external environment, because of the large number members who are in the different developing levels.

Information Organization and Storage of the WTO

The WTO that as one of the youngest international organizations in the modern society, it also has its own memory, such as the documents, the annual report and so on. For example, The Annual report of the WTO is comprised of five chapters that focus on trade policy, research results, and the regular activities of the organization and details of its current structure, staff and budget. The Annual report is published in the first half of each year. (6)

Information Products and Services of the WTO

From the structure of the WTO, we can see that the different levels of members, for instance, the Ministerial Conference, which is the top level of decision making, and they meet at least once every two years. In addition, it has three different councils to deal with the goods, intellectual property rights and service of trade respectively. (7) The information they need is all about the situation of the WTO and all the countries that have the membership of WTO as a whole. The below levels should pay attention to add values by increase the quality of the information and also improve them, and then pass them to the top level, so that the top levels can make the correct decisions in their meetings.

In addition, the structured and unstructured data also affect the information products and services. For example, when china was preparing to join the WTO, it took few years to collect and organise all the documents, so that all the documents and formal meetings can be seen as the structure and the unstructured data respectively.

Information distribution of the WTO

The goal of WTO is to help trade flow smoothly, freely, fairly and predictably, (8) and then the organization can make different strategies related to the different functions of sections or departments, it is very clear to see from the structure chart of the WTO. As the end users, all the countries, which have memberships of WTO, can get a lot of benefits and advantages.

Information use of the WTO

The rules of WTO for dealing with trade in services, relevant aspects of intellectual property, dispute settlement, and trade policy reviews. The complete set runs to some 30,000 pages consisting of about 30 agreements and separate commitments made by individual members in specific areas such as lower customs duty rates and services market opening. Through these agreements, WTO members operate a non-discriminatory trading system that spells out their rights and their obligations. Each country receives guarantees that its exports will be treated fairly and consistently in other countries’ markets. Each promises to do the same for imports into its own market. The system also gives developing countries some flexibility in implementing their commitments. (9)

Conclusion:

Overall, from the discussion we can see that there have very close relationships between the organization and information management. It is hard to describe them as the single or orderly ones; therefore, it’s very necessary for us to understand the details of the intelligent Organization and the six stages of the information management cycle, and also related to the situation of the World Trade Organization in the real world.

Reference:

Choo, C.W (2002). Information Management for the Intelligent Organization: The Art of Scanning the Environment. 3rd ed. Medford: ASIS/Information Today.

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(10) http://www.ukonlineforbusiness.gov.uk/cms/template/news-details.jsp?id=181954

(11) http://www.ukonlineforbusiness.gov.uk/cms/template/news-details.jsp?id=181954