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Information ecology
We/national Journal of Information Management (1989), 9 (289-290)
Short Report Information
Ecology
K. HARRIS
Community
Projects Foundation,
London,
UK
The principles of ecology are used to emphasize information environment.
the interdependency
ofsub-systems
in an organization’s
Kevin Harris is Head of Information at Community Projects Foundation and Database Manager of Volnet UK. He was formerly British Library Research Fellow and is co-author of Online searching: Ifs impact on information users. He is a member of the Institute of Information Scientists.
It is an essential task of information management to confront the problems of unevenness and imbalance in information exchange, transfer and access within an organization. These problems can be enormously complex because of the transience and informality of much of the information handling which takes place. Unplanned meetings in corridors, serendipity in reading, or unexpected telephone calls, for example, typically give rise to the informal exchange of information: this is of course well known and desirable. All such ‘information events’ change the state of ‘informedness’ of parts of the organization, and usually this change is self-regulating and progressive. The intention in this note is to explore the notion that exceptional -hanges in an organization’s ‘state of .Ilformedness’ can be damaging, because they may not take account of the interdependency of the various information sub-systems which co-exist. There is an underappreciated role for information management in understanding and monitoring the entire information environment. My purpose is to draw attention to the potential of ecological thinking as a conceptual guide. Discussing the relevance of traditional ecology to the study of social processes, Geoffrey Vickers makes the following point: These mutually adjusting systems exemplify dynamic balance. They have sought and
found their own stability and,
0268-4012/89/04
if they are disturbed, they will seek it and ultimately find it again. This power is
not confined to systems of organic creatures.’ We need to develop a sense of an ecology of information, to ensure that the dynamic but stable ‘state of informedness’ is maintained (not just within an organization, but also between organizations or fields of knowledge): and this depends upon a thorough understanding of the role of informal as well as formal information. A specific example from my own organization may help explain the potential of the idea. For some years it has been the practice to hold monthly meetings involving all staff based at the headquarters building. This was a useful forum for the dissemination of information on changes in administrative procedures, staff changes throughout the organization, proposals being developed, events being planned, and so on: any information, in fact, which was potentially of interest to all HQ staff, not particularly urgent, and could be disseminated verbally. For a period of three months (i.e., on three successive occasions) no meeting was held. The explanation for this lay partly in the interference of the Christmas and new year period, and in staff involvement in other activities. Some members of staff found themselves uninformed about certain developments which concerned them or might have affected them; and yet
0289-02 $03.00 0 1989 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd
few people, if any, recognized that the cause of their being uninformed was the lapse in the arrangement of meetings. So there had been a noticeable change in the ‘state of informedness’ in the organization - a.disturbance of the information ecology - and yet a low level of awareness of the cause of the change. An organization is an ecosystem with interactive relationships between information sub-systems. These relationships are on the whole mutually beneficial, although of course there is a kind of ‘food-chain’ - the organizational vu&n d’etre of some departments is geared to the constant feeding of others with information. There may be formal information services which feed from and contribute to other parts of the organization; secretaries’ files; ‘bubbles’ of intelligence which managers carry around in their heads (occasionally releasing them as speech bubbles but often retaining them as thought bubbles); formal internal reports; minutes of meetings; noticeboards; occasional memoranda; and so forth. In most organizations the practical relationships between these parts will tend to be largely selfregulating. Thus, if a management meeting, for example, finds that it is inadequately informed about some aspect of the organization’s work, it can take steps to alter the interaction it has with another part of the ecosystem. However, ecological instability may follow if interference is too disruptive, or if certain sub-systems are
289
information
ecology
not nurtured. Thus it was necessary to reinstate the monthly staff meetings in the example given above, in order to restore a working, dynamic information equilibrium. The use of personal files and their relationship to a formal library or information service provides another example. In most organizations where formally published documents are a significant resource, personal files will be developed. Often they function as a specialist’s adjunct to the formal services, rather than as an alternative. But it may take only a small investment of time and resources in a personal collection to upset the ecological equilibrium. The holder of the personal file develops their resource and it attracts some other users, but its existence is not publicized: use of the formal information services is affected, together with expectations and perceptions of need. I do not wish to suggest that the development of alternative information ‘services’ or resources is necessarily undesirable: I am drawing attention to the potential imbalance in the ‘state of informedness’ resulting from disturbance in the levels and patterns of information ex-
290
change and access, seen from a global (in this case organizational) perspective. Among the implications of this concept for information management is improved awareness of why some information sub-systems wither and die: typically, it is because they no longer have a place in the ecosystem. An example might be noticeboards, which in some organizations are unused or do not carry appropriate information. Another implication is for the design of new sub-systems. For example, if a new service is to be established to acquire, analyse and exploit informal intelligence, the information manager has to ensure that the ‘ecosystem’ can support it and that it will not cause the unintentional withering of other subsystems by dominating staff time, resources, user time, responses, etc. I have used the concept of a ‘state of informedness’ within the organization, and suggested that this tends towards a dynamic equilibrium. There are dangers here in taking a normative approach, in the information manager prescribing the ‘state of informedness’ at the outset: this might lead one to seek strictly to maintain that state by
vigilantly weeding, and nipping new growths (personal files, for example) in the bud. More typically perhaps it might be characterized by creating an artificial climate in which information innovations are thoroughly discouraged: this I would describe as the ‘pesticide mentality’. The normative approach is emphatically antiecological because it shows no sensitivity to the context in which new growths (new needs, new demands, new conditions) arise, or the extent to which information defies order.’ The concept of information ecology needs to be seen as an evaluative framework. It is a useful analogy which draws our attention to the whole context of information-handling within an organization, and which can be used to inform our intervention in that context.
'VICKERS,
G.
(1968).
Value
sys(ems
and
social process. ‘Lo&on: Tavistock. p. 19. 'HARRIS. K. (1989). The chaos of informai tion: Some thoughts on unsolicited reading and serendipity. Assignation, 6 (No. 2), pp. 31-34. I
Short Report Information
Ecology
K. HARRIS
Community
Projects Foundation,
London,
UK
The principles of ecology are used to emphasize information environment.
the interdependency
ofsub-systems
in an organization’s
Kevin Harris is Head of Information at Community Projects Foundation and Database Manager of Volnet UK. He was formerly British Library Research Fellow and is co-author of Online searching: Ifs impact on information users. He is a member of the Institute of Information Scientists.
It is an essential task of information management to confront the problems of unevenness and imbalance in information exchange, transfer and access within an organization. These problems can be enormously complex because of the transience and informality of much of the information handling which takes place. Unplanned meetings in corridors, serendipity in reading, or unexpected telephone calls, for example, typically give rise to the informal exchange of information: this is of course well known and desirable. All such ‘information events’ change the state of ‘informedness’ of parts of the organization, and usually this change is self-regulating and progressive. The intention in this note is to explore the notion that exceptional -hanges in an organization’s ‘state of .Ilformedness’ can be damaging, because they may not take account of the interdependency of the various information sub-systems which co-exist. There is an underappreciated role for information management in understanding and monitoring the entire information environment. My purpose is to draw attention to the potential of ecological thinking as a conceptual guide. Discussing the relevance of traditional ecology to the study of social processes, Geoffrey Vickers makes the following point: These mutually adjusting systems exemplify dynamic balance. They have sought and
found their own stability and,
0268-4012/89/04
if they are disturbed, they will seek it and ultimately find it again. This power is
not confined to systems of organic creatures.’ We need to develop a sense of an ecology of information, to ensure that the dynamic but stable ‘state of informedness’ is maintained (not just within an organization, but also between organizations or fields of knowledge): and this depends upon a thorough understanding of the role of informal as well as formal information. A specific example from my own organization may help explain the potential of the idea. For some years it has been the practice to hold monthly meetings involving all staff based at the headquarters building. This was a useful forum for the dissemination of information on changes in administrative procedures, staff changes throughout the organization, proposals being developed, events being planned, and so on: any information, in fact, which was potentially of interest to all HQ staff, not particularly urgent, and could be disseminated verbally. For a period of three months (i.e., on three successive occasions) no meeting was held. The explanation for this lay partly in the interference of the Christmas and new year period, and in staff involvement in other activities. Some members of staff found themselves uninformed about certain developments which concerned them or might have affected them; and yet
0289-02 $03.00 0 1989 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd
few people, if any, recognized that the cause of their being uninformed was the lapse in the arrangement of meetings. So there had been a noticeable change in the ‘state of informedness’ in the organization - a.disturbance of the information ecology - and yet a low level of awareness of the cause of the change. An organization is an ecosystem with interactive relationships between information sub-systems. These relationships are on the whole mutually beneficial, although of course there is a kind of ‘food-chain’ - the organizational vu&n d’etre of some departments is geared to the constant feeding of others with information. There may be formal information services which feed from and contribute to other parts of the organization; secretaries’ files; ‘bubbles’ of intelligence which managers carry around in their heads (occasionally releasing them as speech bubbles but often retaining them as thought bubbles); formal internal reports; minutes of meetings; noticeboards; occasional memoranda; and so forth. In most organizations the practical relationships between these parts will tend to be largely selfregulating. Thus, if a management meeting, for example, finds that it is inadequately informed about some aspect of the organization’s work, it can take steps to alter the interaction it has with another part of the ecosystem. However, ecological instability may follow if interference is too disruptive, or if certain sub-systems are
289
information
ecology
not nurtured. Thus it was necessary to reinstate the monthly staff meetings in the example given above, in order to restore a working, dynamic information equilibrium. The use of personal files and their relationship to a formal library or information service provides another example. In most organizations where formally published documents are a significant resource, personal files will be developed. Often they function as a specialist’s adjunct to the formal services, rather than as an alternative. But it may take only a small investment of time and resources in a personal collection to upset the ecological equilibrium. The holder of the personal file develops their resource and it attracts some other users, but its existence is not publicized: use of the formal information services is affected, together with expectations and perceptions of need. I do not wish to suggest that the development of alternative information ‘services’ or resources is necessarily undesirable: I am drawing attention to the potential imbalance in the ‘state of informedness’ resulting from disturbance in the levels and patterns of information ex-
290
change and access, seen from a global (in this case organizational) perspective. Among the implications of this concept for information management is improved awareness of why some information sub-systems wither and die: typically, it is because they no longer have a place in the ecosystem. An example might be noticeboards, which in some organizations are unused or do not carry appropriate information. Another implication is for the design of new sub-systems. For example, if a new service is to be established to acquire, analyse and exploit informal intelligence, the information manager has to ensure that the ‘ecosystem’ can support it and that it will not cause the unintentional withering of other subsystems by dominating staff time, resources, user time, responses, etc. I have used the concept of a ‘state of informedness’ within the organization, and suggested that this tends towards a dynamic equilibrium. There are dangers here in taking a normative approach, in the information manager prescribing the ‘state of informedness’ at the outset: this might lead one to seek strictly to maintain that state by
vigilantly weeding, and nipping new growths (personal files, for example) in the bud. More typically perhaps it might be characterized by creating an artificial climate in which information innovations are thoroughly discouraged: this I would describe as the ‘pesticide mentality’. The normative approach is emphatically antiecological because it shows no sensitivity to the context in which new growths (new needs, new demands, new conditions) arise, or the extent to which information defies order.’ The concept of information ecology needs to be seen as an evaluative framework. It is a useful analogy which draws our attention to the whole context of information-handling within an organization, and which can be used to inform our intervention in that context.
'VICKERS,
G.
(1968).
Value
sys(ems
and
social process. ‘Lo&on: Tavistock. p. 19. 'HARRIS. K. (1989). The chaos of informai tion: Some thoughts on unsolicited reading and serendipity. Assignation, 6 (No. 2), pp. 31-34. I