Information Management Process in Continuous Improvement Area at Worldwide Steel Company - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 180

Table 1. Data, information and knowledge

Data Information Knowledge

Simple observations about the world state Data endowed with relevancy and purpose. Valuable information from human mind

Easily structure Requires unit analysis Hard to structure

Easily obtained by machines Requires agreement of the meaning Hard to capture from machines

Often quantified Requires necessarily human measurement Often tacit

Easily transferable Hard to transfer

Source: Davenport, 1998, p.18

related to two types of management: mainte-
nance and improvements. Further, for the same
author, are obtained through the PDCA and are
maintained through the cycle of SDCA: Standard,
Do, Check, Action.
ArcelorMittal has started the quality movement
in different ways in each country. In Brazil for ex-
ample, it started in 1989 with Prof. Vicente Falconi
Campos and it is being developed nowadays. In
this country, almost all units have a department
of quality which is responsible for maintaining
management model.
Within the company management model the
improvements can come from a chronic problem
or from an organization guideline through the
strategic deployment.

requires knowledge. According to McGee and
Prusak (1994), information is a key strategy in
the organization, a strategic resource equivalent
to labor, technology or capital.

the intelligent organization

Why do we speak so much about smart organi-
zations? How could we determine whether an
organization is smarter than another? Could we
perhaps classify them according to its profitability?
According to Gregory apud Choo (2002, p.11),
there are two meanings for intelligence: having
the knowledge and create it.
Moreover, Garvin (2000 P.54-72) believes
that successful organizations manage efficiently
their process of learning. According to the au-
thor, a smart organization is an organization that
learns and is able to create, acquire and transfer
knowledge.
According to Edmondson (2008), most ex-
ecutives believe that efficient execution of their
processes by production at the right time and in
time delivery of products and services is the best
way to achieve customer satisfaction and financial
results. The reality is a little different; even the
most perfect performance can not assure enduring
success in the knowledge economy.
The author proposes four stages for execution
with a focus on learning: to provide guidance to
the process, to provide tools that allow employees

information and knowledge

It is very difficult to delimit the borders amongst
the meanings given to data, information and
knowledge. Davenport (1998, p.18) presents some
characteristics of the three terms in order to make
the distinction between them clearer.
According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (1997, p.
64), information is a stream of messages, being
the organizational knowledge created from the
flow of this information and anchored in believes
of the knowledge owner.
For authors such as Drucker (2000, p.13),
information is any data given with relevance
and purpose. Data conversion into information