Information flows – Or does it? The complexity of enterprise information management

Abstract

Although there has been a degree of acceptance that information is a core business asset almost no research has been carried out into the factors that affect the way that information flows around the enterprise as employees at all levels seek to make use of it to complete tasks and make decisions. These decisions can have a significant impact on business performance and on the career development of employees. The challenge lies in finding ways to track the flow of information, especially where workarounds have been developed by employees to overcome their frustration with ‘approved’ processes. Over the last few years computational ethnography, initially applied to assessing issues relating to culture and communication. is becoming increasing widely used to track the flow of documents. In the wake of Covid19 organisations are going to have to operate in a rapidly changing business environment. Unless the flow of information is better understood short-term changes may be implemented which turn out to be of limited benefit or even undermine the rate of achievement of new business objectives.

Workarounds and shadow IT – balancing innovation and risk

“…The concept of a digital workplace (White 2012(White , 2020 has changed significantly as an outcome of the Covid pandemic and the adoption of hybrid working. Where there is hybrid working the chances are that there will be hybrid processes involving workarounds and shadow IT.…”

“…Even in organisations with a commitment to product and service quality there are rarely information management policies for information quality, nor an overall information management strategy. Information is supposed to flow around an organisation but invariably it does not (White 2020) and remains located in silos and team repositories. That in itself is a significant challenge but the reality could be that the information is located in cloud-based shadow IT applications where there are no audit trails and the risks are not identified and managed.…”