Information quality perceptions in the information chain of a retail organisation

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Information Technology In the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyDealing with information quality issues remains a serious concern for organisations. With the fact that modern organisations generate much higher volumes of information than they did in the past, with more variety and at a higher velocity, this concern is only expected to increase. Information quality is a complex topic and there is no single view shared by stakeholders on the quality of information within an organisation’s value chain and information quality issues experienced by stakeholders are also different. In this study, the topic of information quality is addressed through the following research questions: How do information stakeholders view the quality of information throughout the information value chain of a retail organisation? What kind of information quality issues do business stakeholders experience throughout the information value chain of a retail organisation? And how are stakeholder decisions affected by information quality when producing or consuming information at the different touch points of the information value chain? An interpretive research approach was chosen for this study to explore this complex topic. The research was conducted in two phases. A literature review in which different concepts related to information quality were investigated was the first phase. In the second phase, a specific business case was investigated before findings from the two phases were analysed and discussed In response to the main research questions, the findings of the research indicated that information quality is complex and there is no single view shared by all stakeholders involved in an information value chain