Managing computers and work: are companies informated yet?

Information Outlook, Sept, 1997 by Alison J. Head

One long-touted panacea for technology woes comes from Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff. In her seminal work, In the Age of the Smart Machine (1988), she contends that companies seeking efficiency and effectiveness through automation must also informate. To date, discussions about informating have been conceptual. In this article, key findings are summarized from a quantitative study that measures the informating process within 17 of the largest revenue-producing information industries in the San Francisco Bay Area; primarily located in the Silicon Valley. This exploratory study's purpose is to determine whether these information industries are informated and if so, to what degree. Further, the role that information professionals play in the informating process is examined.

What is Informating?

There are two sides to intelligent technology implementation that Zuboff describes. One aspect concerns automation or the often arduous engineering task of transforming routine tasks into a rational medium. The other facet, more central in Zuboff's works, involves informating or re-designing work far beyond automated tasks so that new information - the inevitable by-product of computerization - may be developed by workers into a strategic company asset.

In corporate settings, informating has particular resonance among information professionals. Traditionally, information professionals are early adopters of information technologies and subsequently, the administrators of the informational stockpile. Informating calls for collecting, organizing, analyzing, and disseminating this stockpile so that workers may engage in analysis that creatively adds value to core business activities. Among information professionals, the origin of this type of information management is (or should be) the coin of the realm.

How Informating Might Occur

Imagine a generic publishing company. Recently, this company has installed a computerized system with the capacity to store full-text and compressed images. This core collection serves as a record of what the company is producing, has produced, is distributing, has distributed, and has sold. Information is pulled together from many disparate sources (i.e. art and editorial departments, research, inventories, and accounting) into one central, core collection that many workers can access (these days, usually through a distributed network system).

In a highly informated organization, this kind of central source becomes an electronic text that reveals a company's purpose. Zuboff describes the source as "an autonomous domain, a public symbol of organizational experience, much of which previously had been fragmented, private, implicit." This central collection or database has inherent value because it gives users, for the first time, a great deal of uniquely compiled information that is widely accessible. At this company, information could be tapped that shows the company's overall focus in this year versus last, work patterns, departmental productivity rates, profit margins, in-house job listings, and presumably much more. These patterns, in turn, could be the basis for developing new services, products, or strategic direction.

Management can either choose to recognize and to organize this new information or they can choose to disregard it. The decision to ignore the information stockpile is usually derived from a narrow mission of the computerization project, itself; one more focused on automating one particular task than on discovering underlying patterns of work, productivity levels, and overall purpose.

If management decides to tap the information stockpile, then the informating process begins. Workers (if access is granted and creativity is encouraged) are given the chance to explore different patterns in the information; bringing ideas to the company that will increase productivity, decrease operating costs, create new products, or serve customers better.

A Post-Industrial Workplace

Informating addresses the changing roles among managers and workers that occur - or should occur - with the influx of information technologies. In the informated work environment - a radical departure from the industrial workplace - three necessary work conditions must be met. First, managers must "free" workers to explore and interpret patterns in the central database's content. In many settings, this means that managers must loosen their grip on authority and control and give way to a more decentralized work environment. Then most, if not all, workers should be encouraged and rewarded for discovering underlying patterns that contribute to innovation and new directions.

Second, each worker needs the resources to participate. This often requires that systems' computer expertise be decentralized and distributed throughout the organization so that workers have more direct, ongoing access to key, raw data. Third, management must make a conscious effort to develop and to train workers so they can determine context within the informational stockpile and participate in the planning process; especially at the brainstorming level.