Special Interest Group: Oil and Gas

Dear Colleagues

Some recent research that you may find of interest: Slideshare here

With the exponential growth in ‘big data’ information volumes within the organization, the convergence of traditional business intelligence, enterprise search, social media, text analytics, knowledge organization and machine learning has the potential to revolutionize how we search for and discover information and knowledge.

However, it appears to have become almost unfashionable to mention ‘people’ in this paradigm. Yet these new techniques and information volumes are likely to place an even greater reliance on underlying information flows, social interactions and information literacy.

The findings from this research study lead to a suggestion that some practitioners and management might wish to consider moving away from ‘first generation’ Information Management (IM) and enterprise search & discovery capability viewpoints. These viewpoints have generally been dominated by reductionist (simple answers to complex issues), fragmented, technological and bureaucratic approaches.

A more enlightened ‘second generation’ viewpoint of IM and enterprise search & discovery capability, could be one in which socio-cognitive elements are fully embraced in a proactive ‘systems thinking’ approach; where the organization is the information system, a complex, changeable and unpredictable system. Thinking in this way may lead management and practitioners to change tack and pull different levers to improve IM and enterprise search & discovery capabilities.

Regards, Paul

Blog: Systems Thinking in Enterprise Search & Discovery

Hi Paul,

Thanks for sharing. Do you have examples of this second generation IM / searching? 

In my organisation and personal life I see more for example of using social to find answers, for example via Yammer, Twitter or even WhatsApp.

Would that be an example?

Hi Dennie

Thanks for the question. Indeed social networks (and I don't necessarily mean tools) are one important way to seek information  -see an earlier post I made on my blog of a survey of 55 business professionals Desperately seeking information . However, that's not what I meant really.

The concept of Second generation 'Information Management and Search Capability' is a mind-set, a change in beliefs and mental models about how we understand the way things work in an organization.

From my research so far, I found some IM practitioners and business management were too ready to 'believe' that the way people work is typically very close to what is written down. If you view the information system as a complex system, unpredictability, ignorance, fallibility and error should not surprising - it is inevitable. The concept of 'strange attractors' act like 'behavioural magnets' within the 'information system'. This changes the whole way you try to 'manage' the information system if you adopt that mind-set.

I found IM practitioners and business management were biased towards technology when looking at 'search capability'. Are we too biased towards technology? Many people still appear to think deploying 'Google' will solve their search problems. There was little evidence of 'systems thinking', looking at the outcomes of search events. e.g. some records managers focused on preserving content (not whether people can find it); some Enterprise Search managers in organizations focus on making sure the search engine works and that people know how to use it, not whether people know how to search; some practitioners believe the whole process of organizing information can be automated.

These are examples of fragmented compartmentalized thinking.

My research idea here (argument) is that some IM practitioners and business managers may benefit from a change in the lens to how they 'view things'.To try and break a cycle where organizations are spending more on technology (IM and search), with some evidence that outcomes may not actually be getting any better. 

Cheers, Paul

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Paul Cleverley
Robert Gordon University

Hi Paul

This is interesting. Thank you for sharing. It's interesting to see how different groups be it Records Managers, being more interested in preserving content, or Enterprise Search managers more interested in ensuring the actual search technology engine work. I guess ultimately the measure of success in what ever method is used is how this translates to company success, ie finding that contract or legal agreement which ensured the partnership when ahead or the project was signed off.

What do you all think? It's a great post.

Kind regards

Tita