Van Knippenberg et al. (2015) address the challenges that modern organizations face in sourcing, managing, and utilizing information in their systems of operations. The observation is that there are differences in the way people pay attention to the information that they find (Marshall, 2007). The evolution of technology has brought about various computing devices and the internet that increase the availability and the ease of access to information (Holtshouse, 2013). The implication is that the amount of information that individuals can access and use has grown tremendously in this age (Hu et al., 2012). The authors seek to establish the relevant issues that can enable modern managers to find the best methods for collecting, analyzing, storing, and using information in their enterprises.
People have variations in the way that they pay attention to and utilize the information that they access and how it affects their decision-making strategies (Van Knippenberg et al., 2015). The scales also differ depending on the levels of information that an individual access. In the past, people had problems accessing information as the major provisions included books and other hardcopy materials that were only available in a few locations (Stair and Reynolds, 2013). Communication between individuals could also take a lot of time, implying that the efficiency of accessing information was small (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). The difficult was in establishing the best sources of information that were relevant to a particular problem. Those issues are part of the challenges that technology has helped to solve.
The invention of information technologies has improved the methods, speed, and overall efficiency of accessing the data that an organization needs for its operations (Kaul, 2016). However, that has not made any improvements in the utility of that information in decision-making. The old challenge of selecting the best form of information still exist in the current age, and to some extent, their impact has grown due to the many sources that are available (Gupta, Seetharaman and Raj 2013). The requirement is that an organization has to make further investments in information management systems that can enable the employees to deal with the underlying challenges. However, the issue has to do with the management approach to the problem rather than the relevant infrastructure. Van Knippenberg et al. propose various strategies that can enable an organization to attain the appropriate goals of managing information.
Availing the information in the entity is one challenge that technology allows an organization to achieve, and it opens to further questions on who uses what (Van Knippenberg et al., 2015)? Therefore, the managers need to understand the skill levels and talents of their employees to determine what information the individuals need to improve their productivity (Davenport, 2013). That can also facilitate the creation of workplace networks that increase the increase the efficiency of the operation. Another important point is to promote the understanding that every party has on the nature of the content that they access. The abundance of information requires that the workforce has to focus on the quality of the sources to enhance the validity of their activities (Goldman, and Scardamalia, 2013). However, organizational culture is an area that most people seem to ignore (Larsen and Olaisen, 2013). The aim of improving information management is to improve on the level of accessing and using it conveniently, and that should be the major focus in managing the employees’ activities. For example, an entity implements a system that allows workers to access data while they are at home and on multiple devices.
The researchers provide an overview of the changing dimensions of accessing and utilizing information in various industries. The significant part is enabling the efficient utility of that content in the organization to enhance performance. The approach that the authors propose is to focus on the employees and how to improve their strategic decision-making capacity.
Reference List
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Van Knippenberg, D., Dahlander, L., Haas, M.R. and George, G., 2015. Information, Attention, and Decision Making. Academy of Management Journal, 58(3), pp.649-657.
