Information Politics

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

It is generally assumed that the use of information technology will enable an organization to me more fluid and adapt to change more rapidly as decisions can be made more quickly. However, despite this common wisdom, organizations generally do not experience this increase in efficiency that is predicted to occur with the use of advanced IT. This is attributed to the importance that information now has in the organization and the ability of key individuals to exert their power over others through their use or non-use of information. This paper presents five basic models of information politics along a continuum of ineffective to effective.

1. Technocratic Utopianism: A heavily technical approach to information management stressing categorization and modeling of an organization's full information assets, with heavy reliance on emerging technologies. 2. Anarchy: The absence of any overall information management policy, leaving individuals to obtain and manage their own information. 3. Feudalism: The management of information by individual business units or functions, which define their own information needs and report only limited information to the overall corporation. 4. Monarchy: The definition of information categories and reporting structures by the firm's leaders, who may or may not share the information willingly after collecting it. 5. Federalism: An approach to information management based on consensus and negotiation on the organization's key information elements and reporting structures.

[edit] Abstract

Information technology was supposed to stimulate information flow and eliminate hierarchy. It has had just the opposite effect, argue the authors. As information has become the key organizational "currency," it has become too valuable for most managers to just give away. In order to make information-based organizations successful, companies need to harness the power of politics - that is, allow people to negotiate the use and definition of information, just as we negotiate the exchange of other currencies. The authors describe five models of information politics and discuss how companies can move from the less effective models, like feudalism and technocratic utopianism, and toward the more effecitve ones, like monarchy and federalism.

[edit] Paper Information

Authors: Thomas Davenport, Robert Eccles, Laurence Prusak

This article was originally published in Sloan Management Review, Vol 34, Num 1, 1992.

[edit] Keywords

Information, Management, Politics, Power