Towards organisational excellence : exploring culture, information and organisational hierarchies

This paper presents the cultural results of a three-year study into the concept of information fulfilment, and considers the impact of culture on levels of information fulfillment and how this can help to achieve organizational excellence. Ethnographic studies were undertaken within higher education institutions in four countries, by examining each organization’s shape and comparing it with the rate of achievement of information fulfilment. The social and symbolic meanings that underpinned the culture of information in the chosen institutions are presented here. The chosen cultural frameworks are presented followed by a section of “raw data” from the ethnographic field. Culture impacted significantly in all the studies, and each study had its own unique character and provided rich insights into the culture and contexts of the fields. The relationships between the cultures and the levels of information fulfilment are reported with a view to helping build KM systems that deliver higher levels of information fulfilment