This study aims to investigate the issue of the role of information in strategic planning and decision making in Omani economic organizations. It also attempts to understand the process and the importance of information in decision making. A qualitative method was applied to achieve the study objectives. Thirty participants from eleven organizations were selected for in-depth interviews. Nineteen of the participants are general directors, seven are directors, while the rest are advisors at their organizations. All interviews were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The results show that Omani government economic organizations usually take two types of decisions: technical routine decisions that are regularly made by managers and other decision makers and strategic decisions directed toward achieving the future aspirations of the organization. The type of decision is affected by the level of management and time of making the decision. Participants form different economic organizations are agreed that there should be a clear strategy for making and evaluating decisions, starting from gathering and analyzing relevant data and following through to implementation of the final decision.
Purpose This study provides a critical review of the literature on information literacy in the workplace and its relevant issues. The purpose of this study is to examine two elements: how the predominantly academic information literacy is experienced in the workplace; and review how academically based information literacy frameworks can be used to increase performance in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach A critical approach to information literacy was implemented for the introduction and background information by searching for scholarly publications referring to information literacy and information literacy in the workplace. Overall, 65 published articles in English were selected and found suitable. Findings According to the existing literature, very few frameworks tailored to specific workplaces have been discovered and were all found to be pertinent to academic settings that included researchers. The review revealed the perceived positive role of information literacy in raising work performance. The paper concludes that the benefit for information literate employees and employers is apparent, but those differences in academic information literacy and workplace information literacy are significant. Originality/value Information literacy frameworks for the workplace, when used, are still heavily reliant on the educational sector and need to be further researched in order for them to adequately address specific workplace contexts and their socially collaborative information literacy activities.
Selecting soft systems methodology (SSM) to investigate Omani academic library collaboration (OALC) was described by the owners of the problematical situation as a reasonable and justifiable way to deal with such complex, ill-defined problems, and also to accommodate various people's perspectives. Results proved that SSM has the capacity to deal with abstract and concrete issues concerning people's attitudes and to identify the activities that need to be created in order to implement collaboration systems. However, participants in this project criticized the limitations of rich pictures in presenting a holistic view of the situation and the inability of conceptual models to cope with organizational change accrued between the stage of development and stage of implementation.
Soft Systems Model (SSM) is an action-oriented approach developed by Checkland (1981) to tackle complex and ill-defined social phenomena. It facilitates development of a model of inquiry for use in carrying out an investigation to understand, learn, and achieve changes in a social situation. These features provided justification for using SSM to tackle the problematical situation in library and information sciences. It has the capacity to deal with inter-organizational social phenomena and different worldviews. This chapter aims to understand the existing library and information science (LIS) literature that has been used in SSM applications. It focuses on the purposes and validity of using SSM. This chapter then discusses the using of two streams of SSM in LIS: the stream of logic-based enquiry and the stream of cultural enquiry. Moreover, the chapter reports the changes and action resulted by using SSM in the field of library and information management.
Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) provides an inquiry process for taking a systemic view of a problem situation, incorporating elements of intervention, social and political analysis, and then understanding of the real-world problem situation. The holistic view embodied by SSM facilitated capture of the relationships, procedures, attitudes, culture and structure of each participating organizations through thematic analysis and developing rich pictures. Furthermore, the use of SSM enabled creation of homogeneous groups of actors and system owners to go through different intervention processes. This chapter aims mainly to introduce SSM as interdisciplinary approach that can be applied in complex situation and deal effectively with different viewpoints about the definition of the problem. In the current research, reflection on the use of SSM in adoption of Web 2.0 applications in Omani academic libraries is reported. It focuses on contributions of SSM in enhancing knowledge and practice of participants and researchers through different stages of SSM. This study approves that SSM is a methodology rather than a method. A set of tools and techniques can be adapted to investigate the problematical situation and deal with complexity and different perspectives of organizational people. In this research, SSM is described by participants as a learning process that not only define the problem but also improve the situation.
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