The diverse organisation : operational considerations for managing organisational information resources

Sharing and exploitation of information resources across a diverse organisation can confer a significant competitive advantage but also can be a substantial challenge in coordinating across structural and specialisation boundaries. This challenge reflects the difficulties traditionally associated with lateral relations, which were recognised by classical organisational theorists but are more pronounced with the emergence of information as a critical resource. Notwithstanding the benefits of information sharing across the organisation, the classical concept of specialisation remainsfundamental to organisational theory; thus there is potential for friction between requirements for specialisation and coordination. This research therefore examines information management arrangements to balance specialisation and coordination in a diverse organisation. The research takes advantage of organisational and systems theory literature to appreciate complex information management requirements in terms of differentiation/cohesion and integration/coupling of organisational elements.Information managements business and technology perspectives define theconceptual framework, within which gaps in the literature are identified and becomethe focus of the research. The two key research areas are the opportunities enabled bytechnology for business integration through collaborative decision-making and themanagement of organisation-wide information technology infrastructure.Collaborative decision-making is an integrating mechanism that can providebalance between specialisation and coordination contingent upon the nature ofdecision tasks and their organisational context. Propositions associated with anadaptive approach to collaborative decision-making were tested in laboratoryexperiments, with positive support for the contingency model albeit constrained byindividual cognitive variances.Organisations increasingly are adopting centralised approaches to the provisionof IT services, with IT governance as an integrating mechanism and a need formultiple business-IT alignments to add value according to the differentiation requiredby organisational elements. Propositions relating to the adaptation of IT managementarrangements based upon organisational characteristics were tested using a multi-iv -discipline approach, which resulted in support for the model although practicaldifficulties were experienced in the action research component.This research provides a framework for maintaining effective variety ofinformation capabilities commensurate with the diverse organisations mission andenvironment, while also exploiting the synergies and economies of shared informationresources for holistic benefits