Information Resource Management: Is it sensible and can it work?

Information Resource Management, or IRM, is founded on the assumptions that organizations are systems amenable to systematic control, and that information is a resource that can be managed in economically efficient ways. The management techniques embodied under the IRM rubric are said to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of information management in organizations. These assumptions are questioned. Systems approaches to organizations have proven inadequate in most instances where they have been tried, and there is little reason to believe the IRM approach will be different. Information is not a resource in the conventional sense of the term, and economic techniques for dealing with information as a resource are lacking. Implementation of IRM suffers from ambiguities about what it is supposed to accomplish, the breadth of its intentions, and the practical constraints of implementing top-down reforms in complex organizations. The broad vision of IRM is useful for articulating goals for information management, but the efficacy of IRM as an organizing framework for actual management of information practices is limited. © 1988