Home
Scholarly Works
Working with information: information management...
Journal article

Working with information: information management and culture in a professional services organization

Abstract

The paper presents a case study of a large Canadian law firm with a distinctive information culture that is vigorously implementing an information management strategy. Our findings suggest that, at least for this organization, information culture trumps information management in its impact on information use outcomes. Thus, the strongly held information values and behaviors in the firm accounted for more than one-third of the variance in information use outcomes. Employees did perceive a high level of information management activity in the firm, although information management played a smaller, perhaps indirect role in explaining information use outcomes. What might organizations do to improve information use? This study suggests that organizations might do well to recognize that, in the hustle and bustle to implement strategies and systems, information values and information culture will always have a defining influence on how people share and use information.

Authors

Choo CW; Furness C; Paquette S; van den Berg H; Detlor B; Bergeron P; Heaton L

Journal

Journal of Information Science, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 491–510

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Publication Date

December 1, 2006

DOI

10.1177/0165551506068159

ISSN

0165-5515

Contact the Experts team