Introducing Information Management: An Information Research Reader

Citation

Petuchovaite, R. and Ole Pors, N. (2006), "Introducing Information Management: An Information Research Reader", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 6, pp. 768-772. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410610714985

We present here two complementary reviews of this book, which will undoubtedly be a key text in its field.

This reader consists of articles previously published in the electronic journal, Information Research, which is probably the most successful of online journals in the broad field of library and information science attracting contributions from very well known researchers in the field.

Two principles of selection of papers for the reader have been employed. The first principle has been to select papers that together give an outline of the broad and heterogeneous field of information management. The second principle has been to select papers that have received many hits, which probably is an indicator of some kind of use.

The papers are not just reprints of the texts originally published in Information Research. The editors have asked the authors to revise and update the original text taking into consideration the development in the area. This implies that the readers of the book get an updated picture of the information management field.

The reader consists of 15 papers organised in five parts. The parts are general papers, information behaviour, environmental scanning and decision‐making, knowledge management and finally information strategy. The editors introduce each part with a short outline of the field and contextualise the papers.

Without doubt, the reader succeeds to introduce the diverse field of information management in a very engaging and research oriented way.

All the papers are worth reading. As a whole, they demonstrate the versatility and diversity of information management research and approaches.

It is not possible to go into details with the single contributions. In the part with general papers, there is an interesting overview by the editors: “Information management research”. The paper indicates a fast growing and changing field. The paper by Joyce Kirk gives a very useful introduction to approaches to information and information management and its implementation in SME. Widén‐Wulffs paper discusses the concept of information culture in relation to use of information and relates it to the success of the company. Indirectly, the paper indicates the relationship to studies of intellectual capital and the learning organisation as important areas for information management research.

Information behaviour is in itself a very wide field consisting of subfields, different theories and methodologies. It is not possible to outline the field with just three papers, but the editors succeeds to present thought provoking papers demonstrating the value of different approaches. Two of the papers are concerned with the concept of critical success factors (CSF) and the third is a more qualitative study using phenomenography as the research approach. The two first papers are concerned with information needs of organisations. This is a field that is less well covered in the literature than individuals' information needs.

There are four interesting papers in the part concerned with environmental scanning. Choo's paper is conceptual and model oriented and it classifies different types of scanning in relation to organisational traits in the organisation and relates it to important issues concerned with the learning organisation. In itself, this short paper gives an extremely useful link between the traditional librarianship, information management and the broader management field. Wilson and Correia's is similar in the mode of conceptualisation and model‐building. The paper also gives results from empirical research. It has further a very detailed discussion of dimensions of strategy in relation to information. The study by De Alwis and Higgins shows that the principle of least effort in relation to obtain information also seems to be valid for managers of companies in Singapore. Broady‐Preston's paper is mainly on the Balanced Scorecard and the paper contains a precise analysis of the development of the concept and places it in the context of other performance measurement and strategic tools. The paper also present results from research into the employment and use of the scorecard in the financial sector. Broady‐Preston indicates some valid reasons for the apparent success of the tool as a strategic instrument.

There are two papers in the part concerned with knowledge management. One of them is an updated version of Wilson's rather famous and provocative paper on the “Nonsense of knowledge management”. The reviewer will not participate in the debate about nonsense or sense of knowledge management. But it is interesting to note that the Business School in Copenhagen has implemented a new educational programme. It is a Master's degree in Information Management. It is delivered by the department well – known for its research and consultancy in knowledge management. The other one is written by Bouthillier and Shearer and it is directed towards knowledge sharing in companies. The introduction to this part is short but illuminating and emphasising very precisely the different research traditions in the area called knowledge management.

The last part for the reader is concerned with various aspects of information strategy. Together, the three papers written by Allen, Preston and Cordairo and Al‐Hawamdeh give a fine outline of the complexities and many issues, including scope and methodologies in the emerging field of information strategy.

It is a very good and stimulating reader that should appeal to researchers in the area and to professionals working with information issues. The reader would also be a fine and research based introduction to the area for students. It is highly recommended as a book presenting different approaches, theories and many very good case studies.

Further, the book is attractively produced with good printing, a solid bibliography and an excellent index.

The topic of this book – in a sense, a A, B, C of information management, is, perhaps, not so very original, in the second part of the first decade of this century. Indeed it may seem to be another book on information management, a sampler giving the reader an opportunity to get acquainted with, and to compare, a variety of research issues raised during 2000‐2005 in different countries, indeed, continents.

The book represents a truly international collection of articles on information management by eighteen academics and researchers from the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Portugal. The main selection criterion was the use or popularity of their articles, all originally published in the electronic journal Information Research (http://informationr.net/ir/). The articles are not merely re‐published in a paper format, but many of them, at the request of the editors of the book, are revised and re‐packaged, encompassing where relevant recent changes and developments in the field.

A total of 15 articles in all are divided into five letter‐labeled parts – A, B, C, D, and E. Though in the introduction the target audience of the reader is not specifically revealed, the composition of the Part A articles – basic ideas, literature meta‐analysis and empirical study, and the book title suggests it might easily match any academic curriculum concerned with information, organizations, and technologies. In the Part A General papers the reader will find three articles by Joyce Kirk, Elena Macevičiūtė and Tom D. Wilson, and Gunnilla Widen‐Wulff. The first one – Information in organizations: directions for information management – presents the basics of information management, its implication to the organization's management, and the meaning of information to organization and to individual. It is written in a mantra‐like style, so is probably a must for information management practitioners and consultants; also recommended to managers in order to select appropriate meaning for information management, and gain a belief that they have a key role in putting information to productive use (p. 17) and, consequently, transforming organizations into successful enterprises.

The development of the information management research area, the second article in a group, concludes that during the four decades since the appearance of the information management concept, a diversity and fragmentation of research due to intersection of several fields – business and management, organization research, information systems, public administration, communication, information and librarianship (p. 19) – has prevailed. The analysis of main information research journals suggests that the field is in rapid flux, and in five years some subject categories, such as human aspects, e‐commerce, etc. have gained prominence, and some, such as knowledge management, show a decline.

The third article: Business information culture: qualitative study of the information culture in the Finnish insurance industry, presenting an empirical study on the information culture in 15 Finnish insurance industries, looks at the relation between information culture and financial success of the business.

Articles by Maija Leena Huotari and T.D. Wilson; Aiki Tibar, and Louise Limberg in the second part analyze information behavior in different settings. The authors of two articles apply the same critical success factors approach in assessing management information needs, and present cases of academic environment, pharmaceutical and publishing companies from the UK and Finland, and from the manufacturing industries of Estonia. Both articles conclude that the application of this approach into information behavior investigation as well as that of information management is a recognizable success factor for organizations.

The third article of part B, entitled Experiencing information seeking and learning: research on patterns of variation, looks at the issue of how senior secondary school students seek and use information in learning. Although perhaps not surprising, the conclusions of this study should attract the attention both of school librarians and of school administrators – quality of student's information seeking and use closely interacted with the quality of their learning outcomes (p. 74).

An article Environment scanning as information seeking and organizational learning by Chun Wei Coo opens Part C Environment scanning and decision making. Environment information covers indeed major part of information needed by the management as identified in earlier reviewed studies of managers' information behavior, and is essential for planning the future. Thus scanning of the environment brings multisided benefits to the organization, if not directly then through employment of proper strategy. A proposed model of four types of scanning – undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting and searching – it is argued, has implications both for practice and for research. Zita Correia and T.D. Wilson in the article scanning the business environment: from perceived environmental change to strategic change put the issue into the context of the Portugese chemical industry. In total 47 semi‐structured interviews of management level employees from 19 companies serve as a basis for a revision of the theoretical model of business environmental scanning, turning environmental information into strategic information.

A case study of managers' information seeking and use from Singapore, presented by Shrianjani M. (Gina) del Alwis and Susan Higgins, answers essential questions librarians or information managers frequently ask: what and why information is sought, how it is used, and what sources managers prefer. The fourth article by Judith Broady‐Preston pools together the balanced scorecard, strategy, information and intellectual capital.

Those interested in debate on knowledge management vs information management will find value in Part D, Knowledge management with the two opposite articles written by three authors – France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer, and T.D. Wilson. The first article, “Knowledge management and information management: review of empirical evidence”, is based on the notion that although the distinction between the concepts of knowledge and information is not clear, there is significant difference between the practice of knowledge management and information management. The predecessor of the second article in this part, “The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’ revisited”, was published in 2002 and since then has become a staple of controversy and debate, both virtual and face‐to‐face. Tom Wilson, revisiting the paper two years later stands firm: “nothing has emerged to convince me that knowledge management is anything more than a buzz‐phrase” (p. 162). He also traces some congenial critics such as Larry Moyer, who in 2005 pointed out that it's probably not a good idea to put knowledge management on your résumé.

Finally, Part E, Information Strategy includes articles by David Allen, Hugh Preston, and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro and Suliman Al‐Hawamdeh. The first article, “Information systems strategy formation in higher education: lateral trust”, presents a longitudinal cross‐case analysis of 12 organizations, based on 20 in‐depth, iterative interviews with a range of information‐related professionals as well as senior managers of the organizations. The author concludes that information strategy formation needs not merely formal plans, but rather decisions based on negotiation and compromise. The 14th article, “Healthcare information management and technology strategy: the story so far”, discusses UK strategic documents – Information for Health: an Information Strategy for the Modern NHS, 1998‐2005 and the subsequent Information for Health: Initial Local Implementation Strategies – and their implications at the local level, in clinics and health centers. The topic of the third article of Part E National information infrastructure and the realization of the Singapore IT2000 Initiative will be familiar to many information specialists and librarians from the 62nd IFLA General Conference in 1996, which disseminated worldwide the vision of the intelligent island‐state (Reid 1996). The revised article, which first appeared in 2001, presents the findings of IT2000 strategy inspired study that involved 76 volunteer participants in discussions on the main roles for the government to play in the information society development.

Finally, we are tempted to enter into speculation on the phenomenon of digitally born research papers turning into traditional paper materials in an “information age”. But, avoiding departing too far from the main subject of the review, I conclude that the 200 and more pages of this ABC‐book on information management are worth reading on paper, selectively or in succession.