Information Management Process in Continuous Improvement Area at Worldwide Steel Company - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 184

organizations enter the market to buy or sell
information. The information is so malleable
that it can be structured and restructured,
sold and bought in several different ways.

and frequent reviews on the cost and
quality, time and know-how, strength
and amount of funds available. The
information environment, depending
on their maturity in the organization,
can also impact the business strategies.
ii. Business Processes - The way work
is done is connected to the accessibil-
ity and quality of data, which implies
the sharing of information between
departments and managers. Just when
companies restructure their administra-
tive procedures, they realize that they
must first modify elements of the in-
formation environment. The converse
is also true: information environments
may lead to new requirements of work
processes.
iii. Organizational Structure and Culture
- It is not enough to have a lean orga-
nizational structure and say that this is
sufficient for the flow of information.
The organizational structure should fa-
cilitate traffic of quality information for
those who need it, but only the structure
is not sufficient. Often, even with fewer
layers of management, one employee
has access to a director because of the
company culture. As already stated,
the culture of the organization must
first facilitate the flow of information
or the best informational system will
be ineffective.
iv. Human Resources - It might be the
most important point of the ecology
approach, because there is no ecology
of information without knowing who
acts and works in the environment.
These are the people who acquire,
share and use the information. Thus the
profile of those involved must meet the
information strategies of the company.
Some companies find it important that
all employees are kept up to date on

The Organizational Environment
The company organizational context and its infor-
mation environment are closely linked, since the
organizational environment can direct or motivate
the information environment of a company. The
direction and intensity of this connection varies
from organization to organization, but is never
one-way street. In the ecological approach, it is
necessary to take into account the organizational
environment as a whole. As in the external environ-
ment, Davenport broke down the organizational
environment in three main components:

a) Business Situation : Davenport does not
include the financial conditions of the organi-
zation, although they can decisively affect the
process of managing information. Attention
should be paid to business strategies, admin-
istrative procedures, organizational structure
and human resources policy, since these
components will affect the strategy and the
use of information.
i. Business Strategy -it is generally the
direction chosen by an organization
with regards to markets, products and
services. After the chosen strategy,
defined goals, which usually do not
mention the means of implementation
or the use of information? Whatever
the strategy is, it will have implications
for the information environment. For
example, one strategy in rapidly chang-
ing markets, implies an information
environment that includes: focusing on
information from competitors, infor-
mation quality and insufficient quantity
on the development of new products,
willingness to change management
strategies, information, meetings