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Information Management: Setting the Scene

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Chapter 1

Information Management: Setting the Scene

Erik J. de Vries and Ard Huizing

ABSTRACT
Is information management in need of a new identity? Now that ICT has become
ubiquitous and many technology-related activities are sourced from outside com-
panies, the emphasis of information management shifts to what its name implies:
the management of information as a business and societal resource. Because of the
many ICT and market-related management notions involved in today’s information
management, the field struggles with its identity. This chapter presents an outline of
the book. Several authors pinpoint the roots of information management’s identity
crisis, but most contributors focus on providing alternative notions, perspectives and
vocabulary to set the scene for tomorrow’s information management. In reviewing
the different book sections and their chapters, we highlight a number of themes and
relevant questions that emerge from all contributions. We end this chapter with our
rationale explaining how the book has been composed and by describing its main
characteristics.

Information Management’s Struggle with Identity

The central question in this book is: what is the identity of information management
now that ICT is ubiquitous and increasingly sourced from independent, specialized
ICT services and software companies?
In the next chapter of this volume, Maes argues that information management
struggles with its identity because it is rooted in different disciplines. Maes further
argues that ICT experts have assumed responsibility for many of the issues related to
the management of information in the recent past, approaching the issue primarily
from a technological perspective. By using notions such as business–ICT alignment,
ICT strategy, architecture and sourcing, the management of information technology
has become almost synonymous with the management of information. Now that ICT
is increasingly sourced from specialized ICT service and software companies, the lack
of information-related notions and the over-emphasis on technological notions have
become apparent. Furthermore, the key concept to managing ICT in relation to

Information Management: Setting the Scene

Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-08-046326-1
2 Erik J. de Vries and Ard Huizing

business needs — strategic alignment — perceived by many people as the central issue
in information management, has also been heavily criticized. In the next chapter,
Maes asserts that alignment is a misleading term and in the book section on ICT,
strategy and identity, Brigham and Introna (Chapter 12) then challenge the basic
assumptions underlying alignment and finally, Introna proposes an autopoietic ap-
proach as an alternative view in Chapter 11.
In many organizations, information management struggles with a legacy of tech-
nology-related notions and language. Information management is approached by
general management in that language and is still being held responsible for ICT
performance. Assuming that identity is set by notions of oneself in relation to one’s
social environment, getting expressed and reinforced in the language spoken, infor-
mation management is in a genuine identity crisis.
This crisis is further reinforced by a strong tendency among general, information
and ICT management to think in market terms, as Huizing points out in Chapter 6.
Take, for instance, the traditional definition of information management: ‘the gath-
ering, storage, refining, and distribution of information’. It is supply-driven and
appears to stop at ‘information distribution’, metaphorically understood as throwing
the information over the wall to the eager information users. As Huizing states, the
combination of such market terminology with technological notions further commo-
ditizes the concept of information, such that it degenerates into only a marketable
product. Bryant warns us in Chapter 5 that such terminology also gives rise to ideas
like the mechanical transfer of information between anonymous senders and receiv-
ers. In organizations where general management has taken such an operational,
technological and instrumental vision on information-related issues, information
management runs the risk of being viewed by the organization as merely the func-
tional management of information systems responsible for the operational control of
change requests and ICT procurement.
The problem is that such a view conceals information usage related issues such as
the following:

 The role and function of information in social processes;

 The centrality of information and communication in establishing the identity of
organizations and its strategic positioning;
 The relation between information and communication processes and the division
of labor (in and between organizations), specialization and resulting coordination
and contracting needs;
 The role and function of information in innovation processes and the fact that
information and communication processes themselves are subject to innovation;
 And the design of organizational or technological structures in which people have
to live and work and of which they become inseparable parts.

Setting the Scene for Future Information Management

As articulated by the editorial board, the central mission of the book series Per-
spectives on Information Management is to enhance the profession of information
 Information Management: Setting the Scene 3

management by advancing scholarship and by enriching professional development in

a way that is relevant and that makes valuable contributions to society and its
institutions. This vision becomes operational in this first volume by setting the scene
for the IM discipline given its current situation in the broader domain of manage-
ment and organization.
In Chapter 2, Maes provides us with an integrative framework for information
management in which we can position issues that are central to the field. He defines
information management as the management discipline concerning strategic, struc-
tural and operational information-related issues, and relates the (external and in-
ternal) information and communication processes and their supporting technology to
general business aspects. His framework explicitly acknowledges issues related to
information and communication and of (infra) structural arrangements, such as
business processes, infrastructure, architecture, etc. The structure of this volume
is inspired by the actual and emergent issues Maes describes and summarizes in
Figure 3 in the next chapter: identity, sourcing issues, customer focus and flexibility
of systems and design. These issues are taken as the most prevalent ones in the field
for the coming years and together with two sections on information management in
general, these issues set the context for the remaining sections of the book.
The volume is divided into this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 in which Maes
puts forward his integrative framework, two sections on information management in
general, followed by four sections on the actual and emergent issues in information
management: ICT, strategy and identity; ICT (out)sourcing; customer-oriented
innovation; and design. All members of the Editorial Board of the new book series
Perspectives on Information Management have contributed chapters to this volume
and all sections have been coordinated by Editorial Board members. Every section
starts with a short introduction in which the section coordinators introduce the
section topic, they note how these topics are relevant to the information management
field, and they introduce the individual chapters in these sections.
This introductory chapter addresses themes that recur in different sections and
overall arguments on how the sections contribute to the changing identity of infor-
mation management.
The first section on information management in general provides a more general
historic context to the field, reminding us of what information management was
before ICT. Black (Chapter 3) recognizes three different occupations that have been
involved with information management in the past: the managers of mechanization
(leading to centralized departments as early as 1935, which could be viewed as the
predecessors of current ICT departments); the librarians (who have lost the battle
with their successors, the information officers (who are the third group). The infor-
mation officers defined themselves as managers, abstractors and communicators of
information that was packaged in a variety of formats, stressing the importance of
their subject knowledge and taking an activist approach to users. Brunt (Chapter 4)
describes the work of these professionals in central registries in the British intelli-
gence service during the period of the two world wars. He shows how the purpose of
the intelligence service and ‘the aspects of the world’ which needed to be reflected in
their (index) systems, determined the intelligence work.
4 Erik J. de Vries and Ard Huizing

From this historic context it seems that the rapid advances of technology over the
last decades and its associated specialization have forced managerial attention on the
mechanization part of the field. It should be acknowledged, however, that the con-
temporary content structuring work we now see in the field of content management
systems and databases resembles the work of central registries and information
officers as described by Brunt and Black. The components of information work (e.g.
the work of the information officer and later, the information scientist) as described
by Black, reminds us of what information management could be if we put less
emphasis on its technological aspects. Moreover, Bryant (Chapter 5) reminds us of
the ‘actual behavior’ of managers and employees toward information and the lim-
itations of ‘engineering models’ when it comes to understanding such behavior.
In the second section on information management in general, Huizing discusses
the disadvantages of the generally accepted objectivist and market notions on in-
formation (in Chapter 6) and provides us with an alternative perspective on infor-
mation from subjectivist sociology and anthropology (in Chapter 7). Applying
microeconomics to deepen our understanding of objectivism and applying practice-
based social theory to do the same for subjectivism, he poses the question of whether
or not a sound and solid basis for information management can be found in either
perspective. In both cases, the answer is negative leading us to the inescapable as-
sertion that both objectivism and subjectivism are needed for an integrative approach
to information management — one is better off when informed by the other. Choo
(Chapter 8) adds to this by examining a number of subjective psychological processes
that negatively affect the sharing and processing of information in organizational
groups, such as management or project teams. He also indicates how information
management can help reduce such subjectivity in group discussions and improve
intersubjective information use in organizational teams.
Chapter 2 and the first two sections on information management in general add to
our search for a new identity of information management by providing a framework
to position the field and its main subjects of interest; by historical contextualization
and by a critical examination of the assumptions underlying the central notions of
information management, contrasting these core notions with alternative ones. The
chapters jointly provide a vocabulary to discuss the current state of information
management and the need to search for and develop a new identity for information
management that better fits current times. This vocabulary is enhanced in the next
four sections, which are more focused on current central issues in the field: ICT,
strategy and identity; ICT (out)sourcing; customer-oriented innovation; and design.
In Chapter 5, Bryant recalls an important question from Beer (1981) that is highly
relevant to information management, which could be reframed in current terminol-
ogy as: ‘Given ICT; what is the nature of our enterprise?’ This question addresses a
central issue in information management and answering this question will direct a
search for this field’s new identity. The question resonates in different sections and
contributions throughout the book.
The underlying theme of the third section is that ICT, strategy and identity should
not be viewed as separate phenomena but as phenomena mutually constituting each
other; that is, as phenomena that are inseparably interwoven, making each other
 Information Management: Setting the Scene 5

possible. When ICT, strategy and identity are mutually constitutive, alignment be-
comes an impossible issue. How could inseparable phenomena be aligned? Conse-
quently, the notion of alignment, which is considered by many to define information
management’s identity, is at stake in this section. Furthermore, despite the popular
view of Carr (2003), ICT does matter because it constitutes us and our organizations,
as argued by Introna (Chapter 9). This view is illustrated in Wigand (Chapter 19) and
Slagter et al. (Chapter 20) in the section on customer-oriented innovation where they
describe how people express and reinforce their identities in Web 2.0 and how they
become ‘Cyborgian’ in Second Life. The section on ICT, strategy and identity con-
tinues with Chapter 10 by Ilharco in which strategy is understood as choosing to
choose, to take a stand. Strategic changes are seen as both ambiguous and para-
doxical, creating hospitable or hostile relations between the new and the existing
practices instead of being seen as the result of strategic alignment or top-down
planning (Brigham and Introna, Chapter 12). New technology, for example, is
thought of as an ambiguous stranger, an image which is so aptly illustrated by the
way companies react to Web 2.0, as described by Wigand. The real work of
strategizing then is not top-down alignment but the continual questioning and in-
terpreting of the relationship between ‘the guest’ (the new technology) and ‘his host’
(the organization).
Bryant’s question also resonates in the book’s final section. Using the case of 3D
technology in the construction industry, Boland (Chapter 21) demonstrates that the
relationship between information systems and the organization, in which these sys-
tems are conceptualized, is mutual. The organization imposes its structure upon the
technological system, but new technologies provide opportunities for restructuring as
well, making former, traditional organizational arrangements obsolete. Gal et al.
(Chapter 22) provide a similar logic in showing that technology as a boundary object
is influenced by the identities of the organizations using these objects, and that these
identities are also influenced through these boundary objects. Like Boland, they base
this assertion on a case study conducted in the same construction industry. The idea
in both contributions could be interpreted using Ciborra’s (1993) idea that technol-
ogy enables other contractual arrangements. As organizations can be seen as con-
tractual arrangements and ICT can be perceived as one of the ways to arrive at new
contractual arrangements (according to institutional economics (Wigand, Picot, &
Reichwald, 1997)), implementing new ICT requires that organizations reconsider
how they are organized.
Another central theme in information management that spans various sections and
chapters of this book is the transformation of organizations and systems into customer-
oriented ones. This theme is central to information management because it assumes that
organizations establish mechanisms for information sharing and sense making with
their external partners, customers and partners in demand-driven supply chains. Terms
that are associated with customer orientation are market intelligence and research,
customer/user requirements, (mass) customization, customer-centered innovation, blur-
ring boundaries between production and consumption, prosumer, user-generated con-
tent, user communities, human-centered design, etc. The main idea behind all of these
terms is that customers have information about their use context, which needs to be
6 Erik J. de Vries and Ard Huizing

shared with producers’ information on production contexts (von Hippel, 2005). Com-
bining both types of information is by no means trivial. This challenge is readily
apparent when we reflect, for example, on the inevitable problems in information
systems development, and on new product or new service designs. The consequences of
this combining are twofold. First, the producer is compelled to become actively in-
volved and to become more familiar with the world of the customer or vice versa.
Second, the producer can never meet the demands of all customers and therefore he has
to restrict himself to a particular amount of flexibility in offering products and services.
Both consequences are dealt with in the fifth section on customer-oriented inno-
vation. De Vries (Chapter 18) illustrates that service innovation is interactive (with
customers and business partners) and he further illustrates that service positioning in
the market can be strengthened by ad hoc innovations that respond to customer
specific requests. De Vries also demonstrates that management trade-offs need to be
made between the degree to which one is willing to service the customer and the
service positioning strategy of the business unit to avoid ‘strategic drifting’. Finally,
he shows that through innovations companies could migrate from one positioning
strategy to another, but that this is not without its consequences and management
trade-offs. In the same section, Segers et al. (Chapter 17) reinforce De Vries’ idea of
service innovation being interactive and show its interdisciplinary nature, its lack of
clear organization such as, for example, R&D in the manufacturing sector, and its
lack of cooperation with academia and governmental agencies. Moreover, this sec-
tion illustrates that information management should anticipate drivers for service
innovation that are different from technological advances. The contributions of
Wigand on Web 2.0 in general (Chapter 19) and of Slagter et al. on Second Life in
particular (Chapter 20) pinpoint current trends that are by no means merely tech-
nological but are also social and economical. Both chapters indicate the interesting
phenomenon of citizens already possessing information on the use context of a new
trend where companies have yet to find out what to do with it.
The theme of customers having to share information on their use context with
producers bringing to bear their information on production contexts is revisited in the
section on design. Hovorka and Germonprez (Chapter 23) articulate design principles
to design flexible, tailorable systems that could be adopted by users to different use
contexts. Conceptually, at least, several of their design principles are quite similar to
the ones that are used in service development, suggesting that a set of universal prin-
ciples is actually available. Avital (Chapter 24) goes one step further in proposing
design principles for generative systems, systems that are conducive to innovative
processes. The chapters of Hovorka and Germonprez, and that of Avital both deal
with design exercises in which the designer tries to anticipate use contexts, which are
unknown at the moment of design. As service delivery becomes increasingly dependent
on ICT systems and infrastructures, empirical grounding of these design principles
might lead to interesting new avenues in service delivery design and innovation.
So, one theme addressed in this volume is that ICT does matter because it is
mutually constitutive with strategy and identity. A second theme is the problematic
nature of the exchange of information on use and production contexts. These two
themes also play an important role in sourcing relationships. The degree to which
 Information Management: Setting the Scene 7

strategy, identity and technology are mutually constitutive determines whether the
technology can be outsourced and if so what kinds of contracts and organizational
arrangements should be used to govern it. In the section on ICT (out)sourcing,
Hirschheim and George, Willcocks et al. and Cumps et al. discuss some of the
considerations that are needed, using the language of the resource-based view or
transaction costs economics. Based on their 17 years of research, Willcocks et al.
additionally indicate which contractual arrangements and management practices are
appropriate under which circumstances. Hirschheim and George have an intriguing
parallel with the contributions of both Boland and Gal et al. in the designing
information and organizations section. One wonders how sophisticated ICT-based
outsourcing relationship management tools can provide new contracting opportu-
nities which alter organizational arrangements in outsourcing relationships, as
Boland and Gal et al. discuss for the construction industry. In this case, Bryant’s
question could be reframed as follows: ‘Given this technology, what could be the
nature of our outsourcing arrangements?’ The second theme, the sharing of infor-
mation in use contexts with that of production contexts, is important in sourcing
relationships as well. In sourcing relationships, information managers, now being
part of the use context, need to share their information with ICT service suppliers, to
enable these ICT service suppliers to make sense of how technology is used in their
company. Cumps et al. describe this need to share information between the outs-
ourcing organization and technology service providers. They demonstrate for two
typical outsourcing situations how information management could be organized to
increase the likelihood that outsourcing becomes a success.

Conclusion and Outlook

Information management means that superior information use rather than sophis-
ticated data production is recognized as the predominant source for increasing the
value information management adds to the business. Consequently, information
management needs to focus on information and communication processes, within
organizations, between organizations in supply chains, with customers, in profes-
sional communities and in social networks. It further acknowledges that information
and communication processes could be enabled or limited by (infra)structural ar-
rangements, which implies that information management must assume responsibility
for this topic as well. Having knowledge of ICT is not sufficient anymore, but it is
still indispensable because technology, identity and strategy are so tightly interwo-
ven. Information management deals with questions such as:
 Given this technology; what is the nature of our enterprise or of myself?
 Given this technological design how could we design relationships between or-
ganizations?
 How does my company or this group of citizens share information between use
contexts and production contexts?
 How to design systems, infrastructures or service concepts that provide enough
flexibility to anticipate unknown future usage?
8 Erik J. de Vries and Ard Huizing

 How could we share information about use contexts with our ICT provider’s
production contexts and how do we govern sourcing relationships?
These issues and questions set the scene for information management for the
coming years. We need a language that is bound to these issues and questions, not
one that is linked to the management of ICT. With such a language we can build a
new identity.
What is interesting about these issues and questions is that many of these cross
different departments and even organizations, indicating that information manage-
ment is a shared responsibility of many (line) managers in similar ways as HRM,
financial management or marketing are. Those who have job titles such as CIO,
information officer or information manager should anticipate being responsible for
areas that are beyond their direct control and that of their teams or departments.
This responsibility is far-reaching, and impacts a variety of stakeholders including
citizens, clients, employees, shareholders, the Board, technology providers, governing
institutions, the environment/ecology or society at large; on a wide range of issues
such as privacy, business continuity, (interorganizational) infrastructure, sustain-
ability, projects and programs, budgets, ethical and legal issues, technology assess-
ment, governance and quality. We expect that subsequent volumes in this series
would take a close look at several of these responsibilities, against the background of
the scene set in this volume.
This volume has been edited in close cooperation with the Editorial Board of the
book series Perspective on Information Management. To set the scene according to
ideas shared by the Editorial Board, all Board members contributed chapters to this
volume and all sections have been coordinated by Editorial Board members. The
introductions to each chapter have been written by one of the coordinators. The
coordinators were:

Section I: The CIO Before ICT — Tony Bryant.

Section II: Rising Above Objectivism and Subjectivism — Chun Wei Choo and Ard
Huizing.
Section III: ICT, Strategy and Identity — Lucas Introna.
Section IV: ICT (Out)sourcing — Guido Dedene and Rudy Hirschheim.
Section V: Customer-Oriented Innovation — Erik de Vries.
Section VI: Designing Information and Organizations — Michel Avital and Kalle
Lyytinen.

From the early start, the Editorial Board took a Kantian approach to this volume,
as is also taken in the chapter of Hovorka and Germonprez to which we refer for
further explanation. Our idea was to approach the topic of the identity of infor-
mation management from different angles and disciplines to come to an overall
picture consisting of some core issues and intriguing questions. Contributions to this
volume have been made not only from disciplines which information management
traditionally builds on such as information systems, computer science, information
science/library science, economics and management, but also from less adjacent dis-
ciplines such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, technology studies,
 Information Management: Setting the Scene 9

architecture and design and even music. Part of this approach has been to involve
CIOs of international companies and governmental organizations in the develop-
ment of the ideas. First ideas on this volume have been discussed with 20 CIOs from
several large European companies and governmental organizations, out of which
several of the topics discussed in this volume emerged. We intend to continue this
close cooperation with practice for future book volumes.
The sections are self-contained and can be read independently. We used two chapter
formats: full papers and short papers. Short papers were meant to be cases, illustrations
or positioning papers. As a result, the nature of the chapters differs. Some provide
overviews (like the ones of Maes, Huizing, Hirschheim and George or Willcocks et al.).
Other chapters are built on cases (like Brigham and Introna, de Vries, Dedene and
Heene or Gal et al.). Black and Brunt are typical historical studies. Hovorka and
Germonprez base design principles on a literature study. Introna’s chapter on becoming
technological has a contemplative character and Avital’s chapter is a typical positioning
paper. When it comes to methodology, we have deliberately chosen not to include
extended methodological paragraphs in the chapters to keep the book accessible to
practitioners. In some chapters some methodological specifics are outlined in appen-
dices. As the topic is approached from different angles, methodology is pluralistic as
well, ranging from analytical research to archival research, qualitative methods (mainly
case studies) and quantitative research.

References

Beer, S. (1981). The brain of the firm: Managerial cybernetics of organization. Chichester:
Wiley.
Carr, N. G. (2003). IT doesn’t matter. Harvard Business Review, 81(5), 41–49.
Ciborra, C. U. (1993). Teams, markets and systems, business innovation and information tech-
nology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wigand, R., Picot, A., & Reichwald, R. (1997). Information, organization and management,
expanding markets and corporate boundaries. West Sussex, England: Wiley.

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