Increasing staff education: Effects on the use of information sources

ELSEVIER

Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250

Research

Increasing staff education: Effects on the use of information sources Frank Sligo Department of Human Resource Management, Massey University, Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Abstract

Many commentators today recommend that companies increase the educational level of their staff, but little attention has been paid to the effect that higher education may have on performance. This paper examines one aspect, namely differences in the information source contacts of staff with varying educational levels: more highly educated staff report similar levels of use of interpersonal sources of information, but use certain formal print sources of information (such as libraries) significantly more. Some implications of this are also explored.

Keywords: Information sources; Education; Interpersonal communication; Organizational communication; Knowl-

edge gaps; Library use

I. Introduction

In a much cited article entitled H o w I learned to let m y workers lead Stayer [24] described how an important component in his Johnsonville Sausage company's reversal of economic fortunes was his handing over of responsibility to staff for their own educational development. " W e set up an educational allowance for each person, to be used however the individual saw fit. In the beginning, some took cooking or sewing classes...". However, Stayer added (perhaps to answer the arguments of accountants and others with an interest in the relationship between costs and benefits) "over t i m e . . , more and more of the employees focused on job-related training. Today more than 6 5 % . . . are involved in some type of formal education".

In a similar vein, Solomon [23] cites Texas Instruments as paying 90-100% of the costs of tuition and books for employees who want to pursue bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees in areas relevant to company interests. The rationale for initiatives of this nature has partly to do with incessant technological advance, but also results from the awareness that, as social and organisational change proceeds rapidly, the nature of jobs is changing, and so "employees are going to have to know more about more" [23]. Presently, the managerial literature is featuring many assertions that the quantum of knowledge held by employees should be increased. The general tenor of such arguments is that an expansion in education and learning is a social or organisational good, or a goal in its own right, rather than just a means of achieving work-re-

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F. Sligo / Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250

lated skills. Senge [20] makes the case in almost mystical terms:"Personal m a s t e r y . . , means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint". Kiernan [10] becomes more specific:"the company's attitude to training needs to change substantially to embrace life-long learning for everyo n e . . . The content of the training programs has to change too, placing far greater emphasis on the 'soft' process skills.., and less on seeking to implant hard 'factual' knowledge, which has an increasingly short half-life". In ways such as this, enterprises are being exhorted to raise their educational sights beyond training. The fostering of virtually any form of education is seen as more desirable than providing only that training to develop skills identified as necessary for success. At a societal level a more rarefied rendition of the debate occurs periodically following the publication of books (such as Bloom's [1]) in which commentators make the case for an education system based on study of the "great books" of Western civilisation. At the polarities are the competing propositions that the development of social institutions is better served by a pure form of education, as opposed to a more narrowly based, training-oriented focus on current social or organisational needs. However, the relationship between knowledge and economic progress is enshrined in popular belief, such that poor access to information constitutes a significant barrier to economic or other forms of success. For example, on the topic of helping Maori women start their own businesses, Robyns [19] cites the New Zealand Ministry of Women's Affairs: " T h e main thing we've been doing over the past three years is meeting information needs. Maori women will act if they've got the information they need. They've got the i d e a s . . , but they can't g e t . . , information". Managers who perceive that they need to investigate further the question of increasing staff education will find a useful perspective in the literature of mass communication; specifically, the knowledge gap hypothesis, which proposes that:"as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the

population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase" [25]. A substantial body of literature on this currently exists, but most of it relates to the mass media (e.g., [7]); urban sociology (e.g., [4,18]) or agricultural extension (e.g., [6,21]), with little application so far to management fields. Dervin [3] offers a different outlook in pointing out the flaws in relying on an objectivist, o u t s i d e r - o r i e n t e d a p p r o a c h to determining knowledge gaps. She argues that it is more appropriate to adopt an actor-centred strategy that asks participants how they understand the informational environment that they inhabit. Ettema and Kline [5] say that the knowledge gap hypothesis "implies that attempts to equalize the distribution of information.., are bound not only to fail, but actually to increase the inequality". Essentially this is considered to be because the literate middle classes already possess the skill to make good use of information that comes their way, are more attuned to mass media sources, and are more self-confident in making information serve their needs. In recent years, some attention has been paid in the management literature to the desirability of reducing information differentials within a company. For example, Nonaka [16] argues that if organisational members lack access to information, this reduces the organisation's ability to develop different interpretations of knowledge. He cites the practice within Kao, a large Japanese consumer goods manufacturer, of storing all company information (with the exception of personnel data) in a single integrated database, open to any employee regardless of position. It may be argued that the nature of the information to be found in an integrated database is not likely to be most significant in making the real decisions for the company (e.g., see [13]) but the principle of open access to information suggests a concern with the adverse effects of knowledge gaps. Nevertheless, most of the relevant literature has focused on the possible effects of m a s s m e d i a

F. Sligo / Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250

information on a group. A study that intended to explore the acquisition of knowledge by staff would have to go beyond mass media sources and include all information sources that staff normally access. This would have the effect of broadening the assessment. Relevant questions are: If the increased supply of information via mass media in a community setting actually enlarges knowledge gaps that may exist between information "haves" and "have-nots", is a similar effect likely to occur within an organisational setting? If mass media sources tend to increase knowledge gaps, do other sources of information tend to increase or diminish them? • If management wishes to redress inequities in information supplied to staff, are there any guidelines on the sources that should be enhanced? The aims of this study were to discover whether: • research about knowledge gaps appears to be useful in the context of a business organisation by focusing attention on apparent discrepancies in the information supplied to the staff • staff with more education report greater access to sources of information • staff with more education say that they need better access to information. We focused on sources of information used by staff, following the principle that the information to which a person has access is only as good as the source that supplies it. Different sources have different strengths and weaknesses.

2. Method In this study, the dimensions of information flow to staff were considered in two parts: • Do staff currently have good access to sources of information? • Do staff wish to have good access to sources of information?

2.1. The organisation The organisation selected for this study is a large New Zealand processing plant employing

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about 1,500 persons. At technical and professional levels, its culture is strongly engineeringoriented and its sub-professional levels consist of a mixture of skilled and semi-skilled employees. We wished to examine the viewpoints of people from all departments and sections of the enterprise, including all occupational groups and hierarchical levels. While random sampling of staff would have been desirable, this was not possible since many were shift workers and the organisation lacked a centralised system to determine just which staff were working at any one time. We wanted to involve about a third of all personnel within the enterprise. 540 questionnaires were distributed and 467 returned, giving a response rate of 86%. Question 1: To discover educational attainment, what is your highest educational level? 1

2

3 4 5

Up to and including School Certificate (1 lth year of schooling) University Entrance or higher school qualifications (12th and 13th years) Some technical or university study Completed a technical or university qualification Postgraduate (Missing = 2)

N = 172

N = 41

N = 75 N = 159 N = 18

One limitation of this classification is that it is based only on formal systems. As such, it does not consider the various informal means of education.

2.2. Sources of information With the aim of obtaining a comprehensive overview of sources, an approximately equal balance of interpersonal and print-based sources of information was included in the study. Research into organisational communication has included both spoken forms of communication (e.g., [2,9]) and written (e.g., [12,15,22]). In order to obtain a comprehensive overview of source use it was necessary that print sources should also be explored. Further, the significance of print-based sources in organisational functioning was felt to be less

F. Sligo / Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250

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understood. Sources beyond an interpersonal, face to face nature are beginning to attract more research attention; and as Yates and Orlikowski [26] point out, " t h e introduction of various sophisticated electronic communication technologies and the demand for faster and better forms of interaction are visibly influencing the nature of much organizational communication". The interpersonal sources we used are similar to those contained in studies of a communication audit nature (e.g., [8]). The print-based sources were identified after observation of the sources in use by staff in this and other organisations.

had a one to five scale, ranging from never to very often. For exploration of the data generated from the questionnaire, one-way analysis of variance was employed, using the Scheffe procedure in SPSSX. One strength of this procedure for such research is that it supplies robust information about between-groups variation. This was thought likely to reveal the kind and extent of differences in the actual and desired source use behaviour for varying educational levels.

3. Results

2.3. Interpersonal sources Subordinates (if any) Co-workers or colleagues People from other departments or sections The supervisor D e p a r t m e n t a l or unit meetings Senior or top m a n a g e m e n t staff The "grapevine" Personal contacts outside the organisation Seminars, courses or workshops

2.4. Written or print sources M e m o s or reports from inside the organisation Letters or reports from outside the organisation In-house newsletters or circulars Organisational records Books, notes or files not held in an organised library Magazines, journals etc. not held in an organised library Organised library facilities G o v e r n m e n t documents Computer-based information retrieval systems News media (TV, radio, newspapers) For each source, staff were asked to respond twice: show how often you N O W receive work-re-

lated often from In

information from these sources, and how you WOULD LIKE to receive information them. each of these two instances respondents

Table 1 shows the between-groups differences for sources from which staff currently receive information. The numbers appearing alongside the four sources shown refer to the groups between which differences were found. For example, alongside letters etc. from outside the organisation are 2 + 4 and 2 + 5. This means that groups 2 and 4 showed significant differences from each other, as did groups 2 and 5. T h e first noteworthy result is that no between-groups differences occur for any interpersonal sources. This suggests that education is not significant in mediating staff face to face communication, and that staff with differing levels of education may acquire similar amounts of information from interpersonal sources. The situation is quite different, however, for four of the ten print sources, where betweengroups differences appear 10 times. Differences between university entrance or higher school qualifications (2) and other groups account for eight of these twelve; also differences occur between groups at more than one remove from one another: no significant instances occur between immediately adjacent groups. The source showing the largest numbers of differences is organised library facilities, with four between-groups differences. It has been observed that public library facilities are essentially the preserve of well educated members of the middle classes (e.g., [3]). Thus we might speculate it is education that gives staff an awareness of the information that libraries can provide, a knowl-

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F. Sligo/ Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250 Table 1 Between-groups differences for sources of information received now Variable

Groups

Mean

Letters etc from outside organisation

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

2.58 2.12 2.43 2.69 3.11 2.12 1.90 2.22 2.42 3.06 2.33 2.05 2.53 2.49 3.05 2.08 1.95 2.27 2.64 3.16

Books etc not in an organised library

Journals etc not in an organised library

Organised library facilities

Between groups difference

Significance level

2+4 2+ 5

**

1+ 5 2+4 2+5

* **

2+ 5

l+ 1+ 2+ 2+

4 5 4 5

** ** * **

p < 0.05. p < 0.01. Groups are: 1 Up to and including school certificate (llth year of schooling)N = 172 2 University entrance or higher school qualifications (12th and 13th years)N = 41 3 Some technical or university study N = 75 4 Completed a technical or university qualificationN = 159 5 Postgraduate N = 18 (Missing = 2) N = 467.

e d g e o f h o w to u s e t h e m , a n d s u f f i c i e n t c o n f i d e n c e to m a k e u s e o f t h e m . It is p o s s i b l e t h a t m u c h o f t h e p o p u l a t i o n d o e s n o t u s e p u b l i c libraries because of low awareness of the information they contain, or insufficient self-confidence in h o w to u s e t h e m . I f this is t r u e , w e m i g h t e x p e c t s i m i l a r b a r r i e r s in an o r g a n i s a t i o n a l setting. S o m e r e s u l t s o f this s t u d y i n d i c a t e t h a t s t a f f did d r a w a d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n f o r m a l l y o r g a n i s e d libraries and similar book and journal resources o u t s i d e t h e library, e s p e c i a l l y f o r j o u r n a l s , w i t h only one between-group difference. This suggests that organisations which put effort into making their library collections user-friendly may find that more staff use them. D e s p i t e i n c r e a s e d u s e o f s o m e p r i n t s o u r c e s by m o r e e d u c a t e d staff, t h e i r u s e o f n o n - p r i n t s o u r c e s did not shrink: more highly educated staff appar-

e n t l y a c q u i r e m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n t h a n less e d u c a t e d staff, f r o m all s o u r c e s . R e s u l t s f o r s o u r c e s t h a t s t a f f say t h e y w o u l d like to u s e a r e in s h a r p d i s t i n c t i o n to t h o s e for current information. Only one between-groups difference emerges: for the source of News media (TV, radio, newspapers). Here the least welle d u c a t e d g r o u p say t h e y w a n t to o b t a i n w o r k - r e l a t e d i n f o r m a t i o n to a s i g n i f i c a n t l y g r e a t e r e x t e n t than staff with a completed degree.

4. Discussion It is n o t e w o r t h y t h a t a l m o s t n o s i g n i f i c a n t diff e r e n c e s a p p e a r e d for t h e f o r m a l o r p r i n t i n f o r m a t i o n s o u r c e s f r o m w h i c h s t a f f wanted to rec e i v e i n f o r m a t i o n . P o s s i b l y s t a f f a r e i n d i f f e r e n t to information sources that do not appear directly

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relevant to their work needs. Yet we may speculate that staff are not innately deterred from the prospect of using sources such as libraries. That there seem to be differences in actual use of such sources might be explained in terms of dissimilar knowledge of how to make the most of formal sources. The only preferred source for which a between-groups difference a p p e a r e d was news media (defined as ~ radio, newspapers). Staff with the lowest educational attainment had a significantly higher preference for this source than the next three groups with higher educational attainment. (Yet, interestingly, the few respondents (N = 18) with a postgraduate degree recorded the highest m e a n score of all for use of this source.) Television sets are located in the vast majority of New Zealand homes, and, depending on their geographical situation, the homes can receive between two and six channels (or more via satellite). However, newspapers also serve as an important source; 99% of the New Zealand population is literate and the purchase of newspapers per head of population is considered to be among the world's highest. It is also interesting to observe that news media (TV, radio, newspapers) is one of the six print sources of information received now for which significant between-groups differences did not appear. This is in contrast to the original literature of knowledge gaps that is based in community settings, which focuses exclusively on the media as inducing knowledge disparities.

4.1. Different characteristics of print and interpersonal sources Interpersonal sources may be accessed more directly than print and their information tends to be more up to date. However, print sources may be more objective, verifiable and more enduring. Certain landmark studies (e.g., [11,14]) have m a d e the point that senior managers m a d e much more use of interpersonal sources than of print. Other, recent studies (notably [13]) have come up with similar findings. Such findings may have served to deflect the attention of researchers

from the place of print sources in organisational settings. We would argue that interpersonal and printbased information sources are complementary in nature. Each can enhance the other. If educated staff use print sources to a greater extent than do lesser educated staff, then we may surmise that their sources of information will reflect a better balance. A familiarity with different and complementary information sources permits staff to make choices among information with the quality enhanced.

4.2. As educational levels rise H u m a n resource and other managers who are persuaded of the need to promote life-long learning should be aware that education means change: not least in the use staff make of different sources. Apparently higher education implies no greater use of interpersonal information sources but greater use of formal print sources may occur, especially organised library resources. It is also probable that an increase in educational levels implies greater use of personally owned books and journals that are closer to hand than the formal library. Also, more educated staff make more use of

letters or reports from outside the organisation. Higher education is often claimed to expand the horizons of its participants, and perhaps its effects include a willingness to consider ideas from outside the company. One acute challenge for organisations today is to stop reinvention - to learn and make rapid use of knowledge that already exists, through consultations with others such as experts and through use of libraries. Skills in searching organised information banks may be particularly important for knowledge workers in small organisations with no extensive R and D department and in isolated regions or countries. Both these conditions apply in New Zealand, but are probably general. If, as Peters [17] claims, enterprises that want to survive need to become "flexible, porous, adaptive, fleet-offoot organizations of the future" then presumably

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all enterprises would benefit from staff with substantial up to date skills. With increased competition, companies may change their hiring practices to employ more graduates. Yet, from an equity perspective, our study may also provide some insights into training priorities for human resources managers. If the knowledge gap effect holds to be true in organisational settings, then we may speculate that staff who have high educational qualifications are already likely to be capable of accessing a variety of sources. Maybe the primary focus of trainers should be on staff in positions of responsibility who have little education. An important area not explored in this study is the increasing availability of on-line information sources such as through commercial data bases or Internet. The extent to which sources of this nature eventually supplement or replace conventional book collections will have substantial implications for staff access to information. This study has raised more questions than it has provided answers, but future research may do well to identify the characteristics of highly educated versus less educated staff and focus on the sources that may be associated with knowledge gaps.

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market information", Journalism Quarterly, 52, 1975, 429-435. [7] Gandy, O., "The political economy of communications competence", In The political economy of information, eds. V. Mosco and J. Wasko, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. [8] Goldhaber, G.M. and Rogers, D., "Auditing organizational communication systems: The ICA communication audit", Dubuque, Iowa, Kendall Hunt, 1979. [9] Jablin, F.M., "Superior-subordinate communication: The state of the art", Psychological Bulletin, 86, 1979, 12011222. [10] Kiernan, M.J., "The new strategic architecture: Learning to compete in the twenty-first century", Academy of Management Executive, 7, 1, 1993, 7-21. [11] Kotter, J., The general managers, New York, Free Press, 1982. [12] Krovi, R., "'Identifying the causes of resistance to IS implementation; A change theory perspective", Information and Management, 25, 1993, 327-335. [13] McKinnon, S.M. and Bruns, W.J., The information mosaic, Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1992. [14] Mintzberg, H., The nature of managerial work, New York: Harper and Row, 1973. [15] Motiwalla, L. and Aiken, M., "An organizational communications perspective on knowledge-based mail systems", Information and Management, 25, 1993, 265-272. [16] Nonaka, I., "The knowledge-creating company", Harvard Business Review, November-December 1991, 96-104. [17] Peters, T., "'Restoring American competitiveness: looking for new models of organizations", Academy of Management Executive, 2, 1988, 103-109. [18] Quay, L.C.. "Language, dialect, age and intelligence-test performance in disadvantaged black children", Child Development, 45, 1974, 463-468. [19] Robyns, S., "'Economic sights set across the waves", Dominion, 31 May 1993, p. 11. [20] Senge, P., The fifth discipline, New York, Doubleday, 1990. [21] Shingi, P.M. and Modi, B., "The communication effects gap: A field experiment on television and agricultural ignorance in India", Communication Research, 3, 1976, 171-190. [22] Smith, H.A. and McKeen, J.D., "Computerization and management: A study of conflict and change", Information and Management, 22, 1992, 53-64. [23] Solomon, C.M., "Managing the baby busters", Personnel Journal, 71, 3, 1992, 53-59. [24] Stayer, R., "How I learned to let my workers lead", Harvard Business Review, November-December 1990, 66-83. [25] Tichenor, P.J., Donohue, G.A. and Olien, C.N., "Mass media and differential growth in knowledge", Public Opinion Quarterly, 34, 1970, 158-170. [26] Yates, J. and Orlikowski, W.J., "Genres of organizational communication: An approach to studying communication and media", Academy of Management Review, 17, 1992, 299-326.

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F. Sligo / Information & Management 28 (1995) 243-250 Frank Sligo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Resource Management at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, where he has taught since 1980. He has also taught at Winthrop University and Pennsylvania State University and at the University of East Asia in Hong Kong. His doctorate, from Massey University, explored knowledge workers' use of information sources. His research and con-

suiting interests include information gaps in organisational settings, communication audits and management career development. He is the author of three books in communication, conflict management and organisational behaviour and has published in Management, Public Sector and the Asia-Pacific

Journal of Human Resources.