LUẬN VĂN TỐT NGHIỆP A SYSTEM BASED THEORY OF ORGANIZZTIONAL INFORMATION

In essence, it is a conceptualization of the phenomena of organizational information in terms of the nature and the formulation process of information in organizations.. We posit that ou

OF ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

A Dissertation

by NGUYEN MANH TUAN

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of

Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, VNUHCM

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 2010

Major Subject: Business Administration

OF ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION

A Dissertation

by NGUYEN MANH TUAN

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of

Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, VNUHCM

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 2010 Major Subject: Business Administration

Approved as to style and content by:

(Member)

ABSTRACT

A systems based theory of organizational information (December, 2010)

Nguyen Manh Tuan, HoChiMinh City University of Technology, VNU-HCMC

This research was a theorizing endeavor for a systems based theory of organizational information In essence, it is a conceptualization of the phenomena of organizational information in terms of the nature and the formulation process of information in organizations Standing on the critical postmodernism school, the study took the systems pragmatism approach that primarily relies on both the Peircean pragmatism semiotics and the Churchmanian systems thinking Our research approach naturally gave support to the contextualism as the theory of method, which readily accommodates some salient points of social and organizational phenomena in general and of organizational information in particular, which are historical, contextual and processual To be consistent methodologically, we employed a research design of embedded multiple cases and a grounded theory for our data collection and analysis

Two pilot studies and then four main organizational cases in consulting industries were conducted for field data to firmly ground the resultant emergent theory Next we did the test of our emergent model on four existing case studies outside consulting industries, to raise the theoretical level of the emerging grounded theories from the substantive to the formal one The three research findings were affirmed: organizational information as system, organizational information formulation as habit production, and the theoretical distinction among three common information categories

By our systems based conception, organizational information would present itself as a unity that comprises nonexclusive six aspects: structure, function, process, context, time and epistemology Each aspect in turn embodies a triad crossing the three

human worlds (i.e material, mental, social) Taking the relational perspective, organizational information would better manifest itself as a continuously dynamic triad, or equally, a Peircean semiosis that comprises three states of mind or ingredients (i.e surprise/data, doubt/knowledge, and belief/information) and three respective relations, or human activities (i.e experience, abduction, and inquiry) In specific, we found that the ingredient of data is more of properties of thing, more objective, and more past oriented, the ingredient of knowledge is more of properties of human, more subjective, and more present-oriented, and finally the ingredient of information itself is more of properties of organization, more inter-subjective, and more future-oriented Such a continuous evolutionary process would help organizational actors within their communities (e.g organizational units) enact information that is inherently to be path dependent and interdependent

Our resultant grounded theory of organizational information may offer three major contributions One, it could accommodate at the same time, the entity view, the process view, and the locus view of organizational information, thus is able to capture mostly the information related phenomena in organizations Two, it could maintain a dynamic triadic relation of organizational information, which takes a continuous transformation over time and in space This helps to emphasize the emergence or mediation of information as habits, neither ideas nor activities Three, it could present a comprehensive information taxonomy for distinction among three common categories

of information, and thus, clearing up a long standing confusion around this

We posit that our grounded systems model could propose a fundamentally theoretical framework about the nature and the process of information, which would be also a theory native to the information systems field By this, our resultant middle range theory would be a distinctive contribution for making information systems as a reference discipline in its own right

He always helped me pursue my research interests and efforts, one of which

is “naturalistic inquiry” that fundamentally declares that human inquiry is not and cannot be value free

I particularly want to thank Dr Le N Hau, and Dr Bui N Hung, for their valuable criticism and provocative comments in all stages of this work And I would like to extend my thanks to Dr Nguyen D Tho for his thorough guidelines of the research methodologies and his open sharing for research ideas I also owe many thanks to all of the faculty, staff, and colleagues at the School of Industrial Management, the Department of Management Information Systems, the Center of Business Research and Training, and the Office of Graduate Studies in HCMUT, VNUHCM for their timely support and encouragement during my project I then would like

to thank the local business firms, and especially my friend, Nguyen N Nhan for their great assistance in my heavy field work

Finally, I close this dissertation in memory of my father and dedicate it to the family, my mother, my sisters, my brothers, my wife, Ha, and my two pretty daughters, T Nhu and G Khue, without whose love, sacrifice, and time, it would not have been possible

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES xii

LIST OF FIGURES xiv

CHAPTER I 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to and research gap of the study 1

1.2 Research problems and questions 5

1.3 Rationale of the theory building research 10

1.3.1 Justification for the research 10

1.3.2 Importance of the research 11

1.4 Methodology 12

1.5 Contributions and Implications 14

1.5.1 Contributions 14

1.5.2 Implications 16

1.6 Dissertation organization 18

1.7 Chapter summary 20

CHAPTER II 21

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURES 21

2.1 Introduction 21

2.2 Information system 22

2.2.1 The phenomena of information 22

2.2.2 The relationships between information and knowledge 24

2.2.3 The primacy of information 32

2.2.4 Information in the field of information systems 36

2.2.5 The need for a new conceptualization of organizational information 38

2.3 Pragmatism and systems thinking 40

2.3.1 Pragmatism 40

2.3.2 A systems thinking approach to organizational information 50

2.4 Middle range theorizing 53

2.4.1 The organization of theory-building research 53

2.4.2 Systems pragmatism as the research paradigm 54

2.4.3 Contextualism as the theory of methodology 58

2.5 Chapter summary 59

CHAPTER III 60

METHODOLOGY 60

3.1 Introduction 60

3.2 Methodological principles 61

3.3 Justification of the methodology 62

3.3.1 For the qualitative approach 62

3.3.2 For the case study and the grounded theory 64

3.3.3 Why case study? 65

3.3.4 Why grounded theory? 66

3.3.5 Which grounded theory? 67

3.4 Methods 69

3.5 Reporting 74

3.6 Evaluation of the research 75

3.6.1 Research validity 76

3.6.2 The assessment of the emergent theory and the research process 78

3.6.3 Assessment of the evidence grounding the theory 79

3.7 Research design 79

3.8 Pilot case studies 84

3.8.1 VT company 92

3.8.2 RM company 95

3.9 Criteria for the case selection and the number of cases 98

3.10 Case study protocol 99

3.11 Research settings 106

3.12 Data sources 106

3.13 Chapter summary 110

CHAPTER IV 112

ANALYSIS OF DATA AND RESEARCH FINDINGS 112

4.1 Introduction 112

4.2 Data collection 113

4.3 Data analysis 115

4.4 Empirical findings 135

4.4.1 Nature of organizational information and organizational information as system 136

4.4.2 Organizational information formulation process and organizational information formulation as habit production 166

4.5 Test of the emerging grounded substantive theory 170

4.5.1 Background 170

4.5.2 Testing propositions 171

4.5.2 Test case selection and theory testing 172

4.6 Chapter summary 194

CHAPTER V 195

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS AND RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS 195

5.1 Introduction 195

5.2 Discussions 196

5.2.1 Research finding 1: Organizational information-as-system 196

5.2.2 Research finding 2: Organizational information formulation as habit production 203

5.2.3 Research finding 3: Distinction among three information categories 211

5.2.4 Revisiting and extending the systems model of pragmatic information 212

5.2.4 Relation between information-as-system and information system 229

5.2.5 A systems theory of pragmatic information 238

5.3 Research implications 244

5.3.1 Theoretical implications 244

5.3.1.1 A pragmatic paradigm of information 244

5.3.1.2 An information view of organization theories and phenomena 252

5.3.1.3 A theoretical framework for management research quality 268

5.3.1.4 An information theory of organization 277

5.3.1.5 An information based theory of the firm 280

5.3.1.6 A new taxonomy of knowledge production modes and beyond 284

5.3.1.7 A new framework of problem solving process 286

5.3.2 Managerial implications 288

5.3.2.1 A basis of organizational decision making 288

5.3.2.2 A design of organizations 289

5.3.2.3 Project proposal: a virtual clinic for SME management consultancy 291

5.4 Chapter summary 297

CHAPTER VI 299

CONCLUSIONS 299

6.1 Introduction 299

6.2 Summary of research findings and implications 299

6.2.1 Organizational information as system 299

6.2.2 Organizational information formulation as habit production 302

6.2.3 Distinction among three information categories 304

6.2.4 Research implications 304

6.3 Contributions of the research 308

6.4 Limitations of the research 312

6.5 Directions for future research 313

6.6 Concluding remarks 314

REFERENCES 318

APPENDIX A RESEARCH FLOW AND TASKS 352

APPENDIX B ILLUSTRATIVE FITNESS BETWEEN EVIDENCE AND THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTS 366

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Theoretical categories emerged from pilot case studies 92

Table 3.2 Properties and dimensions of the core categories 93

Table 4.1 Organizations, cases, and embedded units of analysis 116

Table 4.2 HY-ICT’s business of ERP implementation – an overview 119

Table 4.3 Code unitizing – an example at HY-ICT 120

Table 4.4 Concept categorizing – an example at HY-ICT 121

Table 4.5 TP-DTF’s business of designing coastal ports – an overview 122

Table 4.6 Code unitizing – an example at TP-DTF 123

Table 4.7 Concept categorizing – an example at TP-DTF 123

Table 4.8 Dimensioning conceptual properties 124

Table 4.9a Labelling dimensions of conceptual property ‘structure’ – an illustration at TP-DTF 126

Table 4.9b Labelling dimensions of conceptual property ‘function’ – an illustration at TP-DTF 126

Table 4.9c Labelling dimensions of conceptual property ‘process’ – an illustration at TP-DTF 127

Table 4.9d Labelling dimensions of conceptual property ‘context’ – an illustration at TP-DTF 128

Table 4.10 Conceptual properties and dimensions 131

Table 4.11 Three emerging fundamental patterns of organizational information 133

Table 4.12 The emerged core category of organizational information 133

Table 4.13 The refined central category of organizational information 134

Table 4.14 Theoretical themes 135

Table 4.15 Structure property – an illustrative example of its dimensions in case evidence 140 Table 4.16 Function property – an illustrative example of its dimensions in case evidence 146 Table 4.17 Process property – an illustrative example of its dimensions in case evidence 151

Table 4.18 Context property – an illustrative example of its dimensions in case evidence 155

Table 4.19 A descriptive model of organizational information as system 160

Table 4.20 Three basic patterns of organizational information 161

Table 4.21 The distinction among three basic patterns of organizational information 164

Table 4.22 A descriptive model of organizational information as system - fine tuned version 166

Table 5.1 A foundational distinction among three information categories 213

Table 5.2 Situational actions in Habermas’ three worlds 218

Table 5.3 A systems based theory of pragmatic information 240

Table 5.4 Some meta-theoretical assumptions of information categories 247

Table 5.5 A pragmatic paradigm of information 253

Table 5.6a An example of information view of organization theories 268

Table 5.6b An example of information view of organizational phenomena 269

Table 5.7 A literature review of research utilization 274

Table 5.8 Substantial problems of organizational decision making 290

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Pragmatism semiotics triangle 49

Figure 3.1 A tentative triadic relation in business case 94

Figure 4.1 Structural aspect (SCE) of organizational information 139

Figure 4.2 Functional aspect (UED) of organizational information 145

Figure 4.3 Processual aspect (RDP) of organizational information 151

Figure 4.4 Contextual aspect (IAH) of organizational information 154

Figure 4.5 Time aspect (PPF) of organizational information 157

Figure 4.6 Epistemic aspect (OSI) of organizational information 159

Figure 4.7 An explanatory model of organizational information as system (DKI model) 164

Figure 4.8 An explanatory model of organizational information as system - fine tuned version (DKI model – fine tuned version) 167

Figure 4.9 A triadic model of organizational information formulation process (SDB model) 170

Figure 4.10 A systems based model of organizational information (systems based DKI model) 171

Figure 5.1 Formally structural aspect (SOC) of information-as-system 217

Figure 5.2 Formally functional aspect (DCC) of information-as-system 220

Figure 5.3 Formally processual aspect (DWC) of information-as-system 222

Figure 5.4 Formally contextual aspect (PIS) of information-as-system 226

Figure 5.5 Formally time aspect (PPF) of information-as-system 227

Figure 5.6 Formally epistemic aspect (EPS) of information-as-system 229

Figure 5.7 Proposal of management research quality (RRR) 278

Figure 5.8 A new taxonomy of knowledge production modes and beyond 287

Figure 5.9 Business case in the virtual clinic case base 294

Figure 5.10 Process, function, and context of business case information-as-system 295

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to and research gap of the study

For organization and management studies in general and knowledge management (KM) as well as information systems (IS) literature in particular, organizational knowledge or knowledge in organizations is more increasing interest among academics and managers (von Krogh, 2009; Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001; Orlikowski, 2002; Assudani, 2005; Jakubik, 2007) Nonaka, von Krogh and Voelpel’s (2006, p.1200) confirmed that “the construct ‘knowledge’ was increasingly accepted and now occupies a central and legitimate role in much mainstream organizational and management theory” However, though KM as a buzzword of the field of management

in the past decade (Baskerville & Dulipovici, 2006), or knowledge as a mainstream vocabulary of management (von Krogh, 2009), Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001, p.973) still admitted that “organizational knowledge is much talked about but little understood” More concisely, Jakubik (2007, p.17), in a very recent review of KM literature, also observed that “there are recent ontological and epistemological debates about knowledge and the creation of knowledge”

The first debate reflects the highly debatable nature of knowledge (Mingers,

2008, p.64), the fundamental matter of epistemology (Nonaka, von Krogh & Voelpel,

2006, p.1180), very elusive construct of knowledge (von Krogh, 2009, p.2), or a tricky concept (Gourlay, 2006, p.1425) Very often, researchers proposed many knowledge types (e.g Courtney, 2001), or even many knowledge types along with many knowledge perspectives (Alavi & Leidner, 2001) In addition, even the notions

‘knowledge’ and ‘organizational knowledge’ also interfer with each other For example, Broadbent (1998), by indicating some processes to transform the former to the latter, more or less equaled the former with tacit knowledge and the latter with

explicit knowledge Meanwhile, Spender (1998), drawing two classical distinct sorts of knowledge (i.e explicit and tacit) and two levels of analysis (i.e individual and social), maintained the umbrella ‘organizational knowledge’ and proposed a two-by-two matrix

of organizational knowledge types Specifically, in conceptualization of knowledge in

KM and IS, regardless knowledge perspective adopted, the emphasis centered on understanding the difference among data, information, and knowledge, and respective implications as well (Alavi & Leidner, 2001, p.110), or “there has been, and remains, considerable debate about the fundamental concepts of ‘knowledge’, ‘information’ and even of ‘data’” (Mingers, 2008, p.62) For example, while the traditional view (e.g Ackoff, 1989) put the three concepts into a hierarchical ladder, Buckland (1991), in his epistemological schema of information, proposed a completely different relation: information as knowledge

The second debate presents a highly fragile process of knowledge creation (von Krogh, 1998; 2009) Such fragility of the knowledge creation process is from the way people relate to each other in organization (von Krogh, 1998), or on the interaction between individual knowledge and collective knowledge (von Krogh, 2009) In addition, Jakubik (2007, p.17) recently observed that there is a shift in focus toward the community view of knowledge and social embeddedness of knowledge, which maintains that knowledge does not reside in individual’s brain, but is created in communities The new trend seems to look to accommodating two opposing ingredients or attributes: mostly tacit and experience-based (p.17) but also social interaction and process-based (p.14) In specific, for organizational knowledge creation process, Li and Kettinger (2006) affirmed the role of information, which could be the input or the evaluation criteria for the process The former role was assumed by the information processing view, the latter role was held by the evolutionary view of knowledge creation process, and the mixed role was possibly suggested (e.g Li & Kettinger, 2006)

At this point, the two debates on knowledge and knowledge creation clearly presented us with opportunities of research that attempts to make clear the knowledge landscape full of complex and controversial (e.g Jakubik, 2007) Such studies are to be very significant because they, more formally, help to overcome the shortcomings of conceptualizations of knowledge and knowing in organizations, which are not only fragmented across disciplines but also incompatible and mutually contradictory (Cecez-Kecmanovic, 2004) In fact, Jakubik (2007, p.17) recently indicated that the literature is lacking in good explanations of, for example, how knowledge is created in communities, and thus, providing opportunities for new contributions to the relevant area

However, we are also confronted with two following challenges First, any new conceptualization of organizational knowledge is requested to provide a distinction among the notions of knowledge, information, and data Meanwhile, it was warned that (e.g Stenmark, 2002) the relationships among the three concepts are more complicated than that of the conventional knowledge hierarchy (e.g Ackoff, 1989), and that of the reversed hierarchy (e.g Tuomi, 1999) In a similar vein, some researchers recognized the problem of defining these entities in terms of each other: unwise (Stenmark, 2002), or conceptual difficulties (Gourlay, 2006) More advancedly, the distinction is asked to be in epistemological and ontological levels (e.g Jakubik, 2007) It should be noted that until the very recent time, Mingers (2008) admitted that the distinction is still a “considerable debate”, or in other words, this gap is still since 1940s (Gourlay, 2006) Second, any new conceptualization of organizational knowledge creation is required that, with the assumption of knowledge as a social construct, to present a more consistent, instead of highly fragile, process paying more attention on the emerging community view of knowledge and social embeddedness of knowledge (Jakubik, 2007) This is demanding because it has to cope with three interdependent problems The first problem is to reconcile the perspective of

knowledge as tacit knowing (i.e process and experience based, see e.g Polanyi, 1966) and the perspective of knowledge as situated in organizational contexts (i.e shared and constructed in organizations through a continuous process of dialog and interactions, see e.g Brown and Duguid, 1991) The second problem is, with the widespread assumption of information as an important factor for knowledge creation, to specify the role of information in the process (Li & Kettinger, 2006) Indirectly, this definitely affects knowledge typologies, and then the engine of knowledge creation process (Gourlay, 2006) The final problem is to make sure the output (i.e knowledge) produced from the process to be truth, warrantiability, or justifiability at some extent (e.g Mingers, 2008) Previous studies on organizational knowledge seemed not to provide a complete understanding of the process of knowledge creation (Li & Kettinger, 2006) For instance, Nonaka’s model of organizational knowledge creation (e.g Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka & Toyama, 2003), which is one of the best known and most influential models in KM (Choo & Bontis, 2002), has been criticized as flawed (Gourlay, 2006) with two shortcomings in specifications of knowledge types (i.e tacit knowledge) and in the engine of the knowledge conversion process (e.g combination and internalization) as well Meanwhile, Li and Kettinger’s (2006) evolutionary model of knowledge creation was more focusing on the specification of the role of information in the process of knowledge creation, but still missing some relation between knowledge and the dimension of truth Mingers (2008) very recently observed that almost no literature deals with the relation of knowledge to truth or justifiability, even the work of the production and distribution of knowledge of Machlup (1980), one of the founders of KM

The debates, opportunities, and challenges just briefly mentioned above, simultaneously pose the needs, position the contributions, and constrain the scopes for

a new understanding of what the nature of organizational knowledge is and how to create organizational knowledge In addition, the need for such an understanding is

both long time (i.e long standing debates or confusion) and emergent (i.e emerging theoretical views, and organizational contexts of increasing networking)

1.2 Research problems and questions

With the background just preliminarily identified, the first central point we make here is that, organizational knowledge should be framed or positioned, concerning the nature of knowledge, in the long-standing theoretical debates of nature

of information and knowledge (Rowley, 2007; Mingers, 2008), and hence, concerning the creation of knowledge, in the role of information (Li & Kettinger, 2006; Mingers, 2008), and of community (Jakubik, 2007), and of justifiability (Mingers, 2008) in the knowledge creation process, on the assumption that knowledge is created in some sense (Gourlay, 2006) In other words, organizational knowledge should be addressed

in a relation to information in organization, for organization and by organization Indeed, both knowledge and information in turn have already been the focal object of study of KM and IS in particular, and of organization and management in general (Alavi & Leidner, 2001, pp.108-09; Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001, pp.974-76; Mingers,

2008, pp.62-4) Moreover, the distinction or boundary between knowledge and information should be specified epistemologically and ontologically However, this does not mean that knowledge or information is necessarily a discrete entity because knowledge, for example, is both process and resource (Assudani, 2005) This also implies that by such a fundamentally conceptual specification (i.e epistemologically and ontologically) of both knowledge and information, the incompatible and contradictory knowledge taxonomies would be cleared up Our point is essentially in line with von Krogh’s (2009, pp.1-2) very recent observation that the knowledge construct is widespread in academics for the last 20 years, but still remains a very elusive one The latter may in turn cause theoretical and empirical problems relative to different aspects of content or object (e.g knowledge and information), of cognitive

and behavioral process (e.g knowing, information processing, and cognition), and of locus (e.g individual or collective) (e.g von Krogh, 2009)

The second point, in reference to Tsoukas and Vladimirou’s (2001, p.975) double faces of organizational knowledge which includes both organization and knowledge phenomenon, to von Krogh, Roos & Slocum’s (1994, p.53) corporate epistemology which also comprises both organizational and knowledge aspects, and to von Krogh’s (2009) individual and collective perspective of knowledge in organizations, the nature and the process of the knowledge construct needs to be positioned in an organizational framework This organizational aspect of organizational knowledge would best be displayed in Jakubik’s (2007) emerging view of community

of knowledge, which recognizes knowledge as a social construct (p.17) Hence, organizational knowledge or so should also be dealt within the context of an organization as communities of communities (Cox, 2005), which could in turn contain many different types, not just communities of practice (p.538) Furthermore, with some advances of communications revolution that results in organized networks and networked economics (Kelly, 1995), and our contemporary world more increasingly interconnected (Senge, 1990), Stephens (2004) showed the emergence and growth of inter-organizational systems (Powell, Koput & Smith-Doerr, 1996) such as T-form organizations (Lucas, 1996), e-business systems (Pant & Ravichandran, 2001), virtual organizations (Davidow & Malone, 1993), and boundaryless organizations (Ashkenas

et al, 1995) With these new organizational or inter-organizational forms, Stephens (2004) warned us that some sort of information which was based only on organizational requirements is no longer appropriate To be clear, information in organizations is not limited in organizational work anymore, but is embedded in broad economic and social concerns instead Hence, the new organizational context for organizational knowledge is now both changing from communities of practice (e.g Brown & Duguid, 2001) to networks of practice (e.g Takhteyev, 2009) and influenced

by the phenomena of social networking (Wellman, 2001) At this point, organizational knowledge would be referred to some sort of organizational information as mentioned

in Stephens (2004) above, which could better conceptually capture the notions of such networks, or alternatively, of socio-cultural systems that are information-bond (Gharajedaghi, 2005)

Meanwhile, in a profession view, the leading management guru Drucker (1999) reminded us that the biggest challenge of the new age is the very information, which an executive needs and which an executive owns Drucker further predicted a new revolution on information, which started with business organization and centered

on business information but also spread out to all societal institutions and single individuals It was warned to us that, according to Drucker, every single knowledge worker or executive has to manage herself on her information, or she was the only one who could be able to transform data into her information and then use the information

in her own business activities The available suppliers or information systems could provide her with general data only, not specific data that she could make into her information Moreover, the management guru also suggested that the information would be shaped relying on interaction between the knowledge worker and her colleagues, in two consecutive stages The first stage specified which information is necessary for whom she works with, and the second stage pointed out which information is necessary for herself and could be drawn from where Hence, the key point may still be in the very own way the knowledge worker works on her data to create information that inherently needs also to be specified contextually along her work flow

Another real world case on organizational life could also reveal the significance of organizational information formulation It is in Weick’s (1993b) paper

on the Mann Gulch disaster that resulted in the collapse of sense-making in a 16-people smokejumper crew Although the crew was a highly select group, the disaster was too

terrible: 13 died In such situations of high pressure or emergency, it was recognized that, a status of group disintegration, neither judgment of some individuals nor previous action patterns, was very critical With our lens of information phenomenon, the key point of the disaster may rely on that organizational information could not be formulated properly because of the lack of, for example, some proper methods of group integration, or more formally, of belief fixation (e.g Peirce, 1958) The latter turned out to be the very problem of community, not individual (Peirce, 1958)

In short, from practitioners’ view (e.g Drucker’s study and Weick’s story), for organizational life and beyond, the present-day problem, at both individual and institution concerns, may be framed into the definition of organizational information and how to formulate such information These practically organizational problems, in the same manner as the above theoretical organizational problems, may be both long-standing and emergent

From above, and because of the mutually dependent knowledge – information relationship, the conceptualization of organizational knowledge through the examination of the nature of knowledge and the process of knowledge creation would lead to a conceptualization of organizational information, which might naturally have the similar subjects, the nature of information and the process of information formulation And such a lead may be in need, given, in knowledge and information literatures, a conceptual confusion between knowledge and information It should be noted that, however, the crucial point, may be in Popper’s (1972, p.310) comment:

“One should never … gets involved in question of terminology … What we are really interested in, our real problems, … are problems of theories and their truth” In other words, a new relevant theory of organizational information is really expected

Moreover, with the above-mentioned fact that the new organizational context is both changing from communities of practice to networks of practice and influenced by the phenomena of social networking, organizational information or

information in organizations would be also preferred to organizational knowledge or knowledge in organizations to better reflect such networks or socio-cultural systems of the bonds of information (Gharajedaghi, 2005), or increasingly interconnected world (Senge, 1990)

Finally, given the fact that the required professional practice of management in such socio-cultural networks for this century (e.g Drucker, 1999), and that information is substantially embedded in organizations (Walsh & Ungson, 1991, p.65), we argue that the notion of community-based

‘information’ phenomenon would be more fundamental, thus makes more sense than that of personal ‘knowledge’ (Polanyi, 1962) to knowledge workers and organizations Thus, the phenomena of organizational information are more worthy investigating for both practitioners and researchers in the organizations that are dominant institutions of contemporary societies (Daft

& Lewin, 1990)

At this point, it is easy to come up with two research problems or questions The first research problem is about the nature of the construct ‘knowledge’ in organizations The respective research question is what the nature of information in organizations is? Quite equally, how organizational information is distinguished from knowledge and even data? The second research problem is on the knowledge creation process This problem turns into the next question on what the aspects of the process of information formulation are, or how the process formulates information in terms of the states and transformations between them? In other words, that is, how do organizations create information?

With the two primary questions, it is expected that a new theory of organizational information is in need In content, the theory analytically should comprise two components One, a theoretical model of organizational information is built to uncover the nature of information in organizations Two, drawing on or in

parallel with the theoretical model, a process of organizational information formulation should be also developed

1.3 Rationale of the theory building research

1.3.1 Justification for the research

As briefed above, the field of organization and management in general and

IS as well as KM in particular would suffer from the construct ‘knowledge’ Although there exist many definitions of knowledge and of its relative that is information, the nature of knowledge and information in organizations is still problematic, and equally, the distinction between organizational knowledge and information is still in question

To be short, Mingers’s (2008, p.65) summary of the weaknesses of all the approaches

to the notions of knowledge and information was convincing: “they all suffer from inadequate and unclear conceptualizations of the nature of information and its possible relationships to knowledge”

Next, relying on the confusing notions of knowledge and information, as a result, existing models of organizational knowledge creation might be ill-founded Nonaka’s organizational knowledge creation (e.g Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka & Toyama, 2002; 2003; 2005), which has ever achieved the paradigmatic status since the mid-1990’s (Gourlay, 2006), for example, has been criticized as “seriously incomplete and selectively blind” (Zhu, 2006, p.109), or as cracked in its conceptual framework of knowledge conversion process (Gourlay, 2006, p.1421) Additionally, Nonaka’s model could not explain how to generate new ideas and how to maintain collaborative work (Bereiter, 2002), which are inherently crucial to knowledge creation in general and under the community view of knowledge in specific Another example is Gourlay’s (2006) behavioral model of knowledge creation This model, drawing on Dewey’s (1916) theory of experience, recognizes the two widespread types of knowledge (i.e know-how and know-that), and considers these both as the components/consequences

of Dewey’s two general modes of behavior (i.e reflective and non-reflective) With its simplicity, Gourlay’s model seemingly could not, for instance, name the way how to create some thing new, or how to make group decision making (i.e behavior) although Gourlay affirmed the role of some informed outsiders onto organizational behaviors

At this point, shortly, it should be followed Gourlay’s (2006) advice of, for the topic of knowledge creation, doing empirical studies of organizational knowledge process, instead of derivation of the theoretical model from extant studies

Then, due to the conceptual grassroots (i.e ontological and epistemological ingredients) of such fundamental constructs and processes, an approach of theory building rather than theory testing is naturally needed

Finally, from practitioner views, some justification for our research of conceptualization of organizational information is also evident Concerning the first topic (i.e the nature of the phenomena of information), as mentioned previously, one

of the biggest management challenges for the 21st century would be that knowledge worker would be caught in a trap of her specification of information for her work and how to produce that information (Drucker, 1999) For the second topic (i.e how to formulate information in organization), the expensive lesson learnt from the Mann Gulch disaster (i.e Weick, 1993b) was how to prevent the group disintegration in a critical situation by adequately formulating the appropriate group information, which would act as the Peirce’s belief fixation

1.3.2 Importance of the research

First and foremost, the investigation of the nature and the formulation process of the information construct would best be understood as a “scholarship” for conceptual cleansing (e.g Jackson, 2000) Such a kind of theoretical research would contribute much into “the current appreciation of the nature of the discipline” (Jackson,

2000, p.12) that is IS including KM (e.g Alavi & Leidner, 2001)

Secondly, likewise, because information transcends “boundaries of traditional disciplines” (Paradice & Mora, 2008, p.ii), “all the major human disciplines are trying to come to terms with” information (Mingers, 2006, p.103), and equally, with IS as a reference discipline (Baskerville & Myers, 2002), along with that IS research and theories substantially benefit, the beneficial effects expectedly multiply over many different disciplines

Finally, as noted above, with the double faces of organizational knowledge (Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001), or the matter of corporate epistemology (von Krogh, Roos & Slocum, 1994), an adequate conceptualization of organizational information could make a firmly theoretical foundation for some theories of organization Practically, the examination could explain various phenomena of organization and management life (Nonaka, von Krogh & Voelpel, 2006, p.1179), for example, organizational problems and managerial responses (e.g Becker, 2001), or furthermore, how to make use of knowledge more successfully in organizations (Mingers, 2008)

1.4 Methodology

As just noted, the current research thesis was the conceptualization of information in the organizations that are the dominant institutions of contemporary societies (Daft & Lewin, 1990) Meanwhile, information is the basis of post industrial society (Naisbitt, 1982), key role in economic analysis (Stiglitz, 1985), crucial being for managerial success (Argyris, 1971), management challenge for the 21st century (Drucker, 1999) and stands for competence and social virtue (Feldman & March, 1981)

It firstly should be noted that, organizational information, which is mere information in the IS field (Ellis, Allen & Wilson, 1999), is produced by organizations and societies (Newman, 2001), or as a purposeful social product (Swanson, 1978) From this, assuming that organizational information is purposefully enacted reality, at

Orlikowski and Baroudi’s (1991) advice of the compatibility of phenomenon of interest and research approach, we argued that the nature of organizational information should

be and needs to be investigated with the research tradition of critical postmodernism, and moreover, with the research paradigm of systems pragmatism The tradition was useful here because it primarily aims to describe the historical emergence of social structures and contemporary contexts for social action and human freedom (Gephart, 2004) In addition, this paradigm was also preferred because it provides a comprehensive design-based framework of inquiring systems in general, of teleological systems, and of ethical systems in specific (Churchman, 1971; Ulrich, 2004)

Next, we employed both Yin’s (2003) case study (CS) strategy and Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) grounded theory (GT) methodology as our research methodology

to build a systems-based theory of organizational information The former ingredient is for research design and the latter for a method of data collection and analysis Our study was also qualitative because evident is qualitative (Tsoukas, 1989)

There were several key reasons for our choice of these both First, both are typical methods of the research tradition of interpretivism, and hence, applicable under critical postmodernism (Gephart, 1999) Second, case research was ideal for problem formulation and grounded theory building (van de Ven, 2007) In addition, for case research design, approaches of data analysis was least developed (Yin, 2003), thus, GT,

“the most widely used qualitative interpretive framework” (Denzin, 1994, p.508), naturally became our method of analysis and interpretation (e.g Goulding, 1998) Third, concerning CS only, it was a way to make real world issues, especially business research, “front and center” (Lee, 2007), or a preferred strategy for “how” and “why” research questions (Yin, 2003) Fourth, regarding GT only, GT is suggested for social symbolic analyses in general because its originators looked to Peirce’s pragmatism and early symbolic interactionism as well (Suddaby, 2006) Moreover, GT is trans-disciplinary and commonly accepted to be holistic, naturalistic and inductive (Egan,

2002), is inductive, processual and contextual (Orlikowski, 1993), is attentive to issues

of interpretation and process and does not bind one too closely to long-standing assumptions (Suddaby, 2006), or is potentially attractive to studies of management action and to mode 2 researchers (Partington, 2000) those who look to the use of their research findings, or helps to get a superior understanding of organization phenomenon (Turner, 1983) A more complete discussion is elaborated in our next chapter 3 of methodology

1.5 Contributions and Implications

Based on IS studies, our study attempts to make several contributions to the

IS field, and moreover, to the literature of organization and management, the main reference disciplines of IS itself Also presented here are some our research implications, primarily theoretical ones, and secondarily managerial ones

1.5.1 Contributions

First and foremost, our research contributes to the relevant literature a systems-based theory of organizational information It is a pragmatic theory of information in organizations, which is conceptualized as a system Our conceptualization of organizational information as system excels in three points One,

it could afford to explain simultaneously both the nature of organizational information and the process of organizational information creation in the same model We are unaware of any literature that approaches organizational information in this way Two,

it could maintain multiple perspectives of organizational information At least two primary perspectives could be accommodated: substance, and process Our research may be unique in this direction For the view of substance, in reference to von Krogh’s (2009) above-mentioned framework of different aspects of knowledge in organizations, our theory simultaneously covers the aspects of object (e.g information, knowledge, data), of cognitive or behavioral process (e.g perception, cognition, conception), and

of locus (e.g individual, collective, material) In regard to the view of process, our theory could include all of three states of information in the process: resource (i.e input, or raw materials), product (i.e output), and design (i.e process, development, or production) Three, our model emphasizes on information as system, which turns out a Peirce’s triad Almost none of literature considers organizational information a triadic system, which may bring into two worthy side effects One effect is to supersede dualism and its varieties, which could be, for instance, mind-body, form-content, signifier-signified, cause-effect, or producer-product relationship (e.g Singer, 1959) The other effect is to accommodate an evolutionary dialectic: a unity (i.e system as a whole), a set of three (i.e three ingredients of system), or both (i.e changing over time)

Second, our study makes contribution to the relevant literature by a set of methods of information formulation We see no counterpart in IS deal with this dimension of organizational information Our model suggests a combination of Peirce’s methods of belief fixation and Weick’s improvisation that is originally devised

as a means of organizational design Broadly, the methods suggested could be appropriately applied into any inquiry

Third, our research contributes to the relevant literature a property of context of organizational information Concerning this, our resultant grounded theory could not only bridge the gap between context of inquiry (e.g Mitroff, 1973) and context of action (e.g Simon, 1999) but also show an emergence of context of organizational habit Although habits, rather than ideas or activities, are the products of pragmatism (e.g Hickman, 1994), almost no pragmatic theory of information so far has been seen to offer this property

Finally, our research contribution to the relevant literature is a comprehensive distinction among the notions ‘information’, ‘knowledge’, and ‘data’

To be concise, the central theoretical theme is that information is much more

inter-subjective in comparisons with knowledge (i.e more inter-subjective), and with data (i.e more objective) Our theoretical model presents itself as mediation between Ackoff’s (1989) conventional information hierarchy and Tuomi’s (1999) reversed hierarchy, and thus attempts to clear up the long standing confusion of the three notions (e.g Mingers, 2008)

In short, intensively centering on the multi-faceted nature of information in organizations, or information in the IS field (i.e ontological, epistemological, and so on), our resultant grounded theory, a systems-based theory of organizational information, is thus a middle-range theory (e.g Bourgeois, 1979) native to the IS field that could not exist without ‘information’ (e.g Mingers, 2006; Metcalfe & Powell, 1995) Hence, our resultant theory is an attempt to make IS as a reference discipline in its own right (e.g Baskerville & Myers, 2002)

1.5.2 Implications

In addition to the contributions mentioned above, some theoretical implications are also drawn out as follows Mentioning a theoretical implication, we simply put that it may refer to either the broad literatures outside the IS field or some subject area outside that of our research questions posed at the outset of the study

The first implication is on a pragmatic paradigm of information to offer a core meta-theoretical framework for information theoretical and empirical research It would be an answer to Floridi’s (2002b) asking about a philosophy of information, or

to Lauer’s (2001) request of information paradigm The second one is to provide an information view on organization theories and phenomena It would be a complementary perspective of triadic information for a refresh theoretical understanding on organization studies The third is to suggest an information theory of organization, which is elaborated in an intensive contrast to Weick’s (1979, 1995) cognitive theory of organization In short, whilst Weick’s theory is dyadic, and sense-

making, ours is triadic, and habit-forming The fourth is to propose an information based theory of the firm with a supportive comparison with Grant’s (2002) knowledge based view of the firm It would be a start point for a comprehensive theory simultaneously including resource based, process based, and product based view of the firm The fifth is to suggest a theoretical model of management research quality, which requires a synergy of rigor, relevance, and richness of a research It would be a response to settle the rigor-relevance debate (e.g Vermeulen, 2005) for long in management research, or an advanced framework of research beyond van Maanen, Sorensen & Mitchell’s (2007) interplay between theory and method The sixth is to offer a taxonomy of knowledge production modes and beyond In contrast to Gibbons

et al’s (1994) two modes of knowledge production, our taxonomy, against the knowledge types derived from the resultant grounded theory, delivers three modes of knowledge production In addition, our taxonomy also reflects both that of research contexts and that of research types The taxonomy of research contexts includes three contexts (instead of two as often assumed in philosophy of science): of discovery, of justification, and of application The taxonomy of research types, drawing on the crucial factor driving the respective research, proposes three types of research: problem-led, method-led, and theory-led research The seventh is to suggest a framework of problem solving process It would be a refinement of Lang, Dittrich & White’s (1978) schema of problem formulation, in which we, against the information categories implied in our resultant grounded theory, make clear the three stages of problem solving: problem finding, problem formulation, and problem solving

Finally, three managerial implications are also shown: one, on organizational decision making; two, on design of organizations; and three, on an implementation of a virtual clinic of management consultancy for small and medium businesses The first two managerial implications naturally emerge as the two problems

of organizational designs and effective decision making are interrelated and based on

the notions of information and information processing (e.g Simon, 1997; Nonaka, von Krogh & Voelpel, 2006) The third managerial implication is an implementation as termed by Churchman and Schainblatt (1965), which is in fact a use of research findings, where we attempted to operationalize our model of organizational information as system for building an electronic stock of business consulting cases

1.6 Dissertation organization

The dissertation report is organized in the following manner Chapter 1 provides a background of the study, mainly including both the research problems and the methodology The objects of study identified are the nature of information in organizations and the process of organizational information formulation The methodology adopted is a theory-building one, which is relying on a case based design and a grounded approach for data gathering and analysis

Chapter 2 then, by reviewing some information and knowledge studies, describes the research gap and frames the research problems in IS including KM, given the present disciplinary status of these both, as well as in their reference disciplines such as organization and management science The other section of the chapter is to introduce some essentials of pragmatism and systems thinking such as Peirce’s (1958) semiotics, and Gharajedaghi’s (2005) design based systems model that play the role of theoretical lens to shape designing the study, conducting several pilot studies, making theoretical comparisons during later data analysis and collection, and validating and refining the research findings in comparison and contrast with some extant literatures when reaching research closure At the end, middle range theorizing is presented

Next is Chapter 3 that is devoted to present the methodological aspects of a theory building research on a substantive area of organizational life which comprises typical organizational business activities in consulting industries The descriptions mainly include the research strategy, and the research design The former, relying on

Yin’s case based design along with Glaser and Strauss’ grounded theory for data collection and analysis, presents a qualitative empirical study to build a grounded middle range theory of organizational information The latter discusses the units of data collection and analysis, logic linking evident and theoretical constructs, criteria for interpreting research findings, the procedures of theoretical sampling and constant comparisons, and of data collection and analysis The content of the chapter logically divides into two parts The first part is about methods in principles and the next is a development of methodical procedures in details A bulk of content of the chapter is some justifications of methodological choices such as methods, units of analysis, and

so on In addition, two pilot case studies of business management consulting are also described in this chapter

Then chapter 4 describes the actual data collection and analysis and derives empirical findings The real world cases in four consulting organizations are presented, starting with the company background, field data of business activities, then to conceptual constructs and categories that are emerged, compared and retained The analysis reaches the core theoretical category that is the notion ‘system’ and its properties such as structure, function, process, context, and so on Along the process, the theoretical relationships, which turn out Peirce’s triad, are also identified Next described is the emerging grounded theory of organizational information that is a systems-based model A great deal of space is spent for testing the resultant theory with four existing cases in management literature, yet outside the area of consultancy industry

Next is chapter 5 that concentrates on intensive discussions of research findings and drawing out some implications that are primarily theoretical ones of the fields of organization, of the firm, of research and of problem solving The activity flow is enfolding the literature, including comparison with conflict bodies of knowledge and contrast with similar bodies of knowledge, and finally raising

theoretical level of the resultant theory The theoretical implications are in sequence: an information view of organizational theories and phenomena, an information theory of organization, an information based view of the firm, a framework of management research quality, a taxonomy of knowledge production modes, and a framework of problem solving process There are several managerial implications such as a basis for organizational decision making, a design of organizations, and a project proposal of virtual clinic of management consultancy for small and medium businesses

Ultimately, chapter 6 concludes the report by first summarizing the findings and implications, then stating the contributions, and finally discussing several limitations and strengths of the study as well as topics for future research

1.7 Chapter summary

This chapter provided an overview of a theory building research of organizational knowledge The background related to the fields of IS and KM and their main reference disciplines such as organization and management The research gap in the literatures was evident, and the research problem was identified as the conceptualization of organizational information Following this, the nature of organizational information and the organizational information formulation process were two key research questions The research methodology adopted was a combination of case based research design and grounded theory approach of data collection and analysis The consulting industry was the substantive area for our grounded study with four organizational cases that were theoretically sampled Our research also tested and hence, affirmed the emerging grounded theory of organizational information with four existing cases in management studies The conceptual areas for our grounded study, given the multi-faceted nature of information, were, for instance, organization and management theories, inquiry field, and problem solving studies

Concerning section one, we enter into some long ago confusion between the notion ‘knowledge’ and ‘information’ in organizations, then identify a primacy of information over knowledge in organizational life, and proceed to several conceptual features of information in the field of IS, or equally, of information in organizations

In regard to section two, we step into the Churchmanian school of systems thinking that, to our view, may keep in the same place both fundamental traditions: pragmatism thinking and systems thinking For the former, we trace back into Peirce’s classical pragmatism, of which essentials are briefly presented hereafter only including the Peircean epistemology, and semiotics For the latter, we focus on Churchman’s (1971; 1979) insights of the notion ‘system’, which include understandings of

‘boundary’, ‘improvement’, design thinking, and pluralism or multiple perspectives Then we go further by looking to Gharajedaghi’s (2005) design and systems thinking,

which is also rooted from the school, for some hints on systems modeling of the complex social phenomena like organizational information and knowledge

And finally, in the ending section of the chapter, relying on Bourgeois’s (1979) middle range theorizing, we start with a sketch of our research organization The latter, with its heavy involvement in some fundamentals of epistemology and human reasoning, thus, strongly demands some justified descriptions of the research philosophical foundations (i.e research paradigm) and the research methodological foundations Along the flow, they are respectively Churchman’s (1971; 1979) philosophy of systems as our research paradigm that we term systems pragmatism, and the contextualism as our theory of methodology (e.g Mjoset, 2009; Pettigrew, 1990)

2.2 Information system

2.2.1 The phenomena of information

First of all, information is ubiquitous For example, Fuchs (2005) considered that information is an evolutionary entity which could be found in various kinds of systems of different development stages The evolution stair would start with dissipative systems (e.g physical, chemical ones), to autopoiesis systems (e.g biological ones), and finally end with autocreative systems (e.g social systems) In a similar vein, in his system hierarchy of nine complex levels of real world, Boulding (1956) argued that the theory of information could be applied directly onto any system

of level four, which would be open systems, and onto that of upper levels In the present study’s scope, we focus on Boulding’s level eight-systems that would be socio-cultural ones (e.g institutions), immediately upper than level seven ones (e.g humans

as systems) and lower than level nine ones (e.g transcendental systems)

Next, theoretical basis of information is the doctrine of signs (Mason, 1978), which, according to the great empiricist John Locke, is one of the three sorts of all human knowledge and “encompasses the nature of the signs that the minds employs for

the understanding of things or for conveying its knowledge for others” (p.220) And it

is worth noting that Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of both the pragmatism philosophy and the science of semiotics (Ivanov & Bradbury, 1978), was the first pointed out the triadic relationships of any sign, and moreover, put the sign user (i.e

‘interpretant’ termed by Peirce himself) onto the central position of such relations (Mason, 1978) For behavioral sciences, Morris (1971) advanced Peirce’s insights and divided semiotics into three interrelated disciplines: syntactics (i.e the relations among signs), semantics (i.e the relations between signs and their objects), and pragmatics (i.e the relations between signs and their users) In a different setting of the communication studies, Weaver (1998) identified the three hierarchical levels or problems: level A - the technical problem (i.e transmissions of signs), level B - the semantic problem (i.e signs conveying meanings), and level C - the effectiveness or influence problem (i.e signs affecting receivers) It should be again noted that our study much more concerned the third component within both Morris’s (i.e pragmatics) and Weaver’s (i.e the effectiveness) framework

Finally, in a recent comprehensive observation of the phenomena of information, Newman (2001) summarized four main approaches of information: probabilistic, information processing, ecological, and socio and organizational It should be paid attention that, for his categorizing approaches, Newman suggested three thematic issues in terms of the three following questions (p.163) The first one is whether information is produced (or immanent) The second is if understanding information requires cognitive processes and symbolic structures And the last one is whether uncertainty-reduction is a defining characteristic of information Moreover, the only perspective of having three affirmative anwers to the questions just mentioned is information systems view, which belongs to his category of the social and organizational approach of information From this, we claimed three attributes which were assumed for specifying information as the object of study in our thesis: (i)

information as social construction or product, (ii) information requiring cognitive processes and symbolic structures, and (iii) information owing an uncertainty-reduction definition At this point, it should be noted that, such a specification might get the phenomena of information under investigation to be much closer to what was often referred to organizational information that could be understood as, for example, “facts given and taken, and inferences drawn and established by participants within an organizational situation” (Swanson, 1978, p.238) In addition, by the specification, our adoption of the research paradigm and methods in the next chapter of methodology would be self-evident, and this was also a reflection of Gephart’s (2004, p.455) emphasis of “the methodological importance of theory”

In short, the phenomena of information are universal and could find their theoretical foundations in Peirce’s semiotics And the latter with the generic triadic relations of signs could also fully guide studies of information in general and information in institutions in particular In turn, information in (social and) organizational life, which is the unique object of study of the field of IS, could feature

a social product of symbolic structures and of pragmatic use

2.2.2 The relationships between information and knowledge

Assumed a research gap of conceptualization of both knowledge and information as just introductorily identified above, a review of nature of both knowledge and information is necessary to affirm the research problems and questions and then to position the research findings in the literature of the field

However, as presented next, such a review naturally and unexpectedly leads

to and turns out a reconsideration of the relationships between information and knowledge, and even data (Mingers, 2008) We start with a notion of information at Grant’s (2002) advice of dispensation with the notion of ‘organizational knowledge’ The cognitive science and semiotics, two ‘reference disciplines’ of IS (Baskerville &

Myers, 2002), which were considerably employed in, for example, Mingers’ (2006) influential work, are adopted for our review

In the broad interdisciplinary field of cognitive sciences, information is often positioned in a series of phenomena interrelated that could be events (Earl, 1994), trace, symbol, and meaning (Mingers, 2006), signals (Choo, 2006), data (Davenport & Prusak, 1998), information (Metcalfe & Powell, 1995), computation (Floridi, 2002b), communication (Weaver, 1998), intelligence (Olson & Courtney, 1998), question (Lauer, 2001), knowledge (Polanyi, 1962), decision (Gordon & Olson, 1985), automatic, collective, objectified, and conscious knowledge (Spender, 1998), individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational knowledge (Nonaka, 1994), objective, and subjective knowledge (Dawson, 1981), esoteric, and exoteric knowledge (Churchman, 1971), process of knowing (Polanyi, 1962), belief (Gettier, 1963), practical knowledge (Fuchs, 2005), meaningful, and significant information (Haynes, 2003), wisdom (Ackoff, 1989), understanding (Gharajedaghi, 2005), result (Davenport

et al, 2001), and rational action (Ulrich, 2001) This is obviously in tune with Tsoukas’ (1996) comment that conceptual categories of the phenomenon under classification must be assumed to be discrete, separate, and stable however the problem is that they hardly ever are Nevertheless, it is also widely recognized in the information and knowledge studies that both the relationships among data, information and knowledge and the respective definitional characteristics of these categories are very often put in some kinds of ladder (Mingers, 2006; Rowley, 2007; Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Tuomi, 1999) Therefore, the next is to have a look at the hierarchies in the literature of the fields

The first kind of hierarchy or the conventional hierarchy is rooted from Ackoff’s (1989) work of hierarchy of human mind content (e.g Rowley, 2007) and this very popular hierarchy of data-information-knowledge (Earl, 1994; Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Sveiby, 1997; Ponelis & Fairer-Wessels, 1998) is positioned as a central

model of information management, IS and KM literatures (Rowley, 2007) Turban and Frenzel (1992) proposed a typical instance of this hierarchy that classifies the concepts

of data, information and knowledge in terms of quantity and level of abstraction As a result, knowledge is of lowest quantity, of highest level of abstraction and on the top of the hierarchy Meanwhile, Choo (2006) stated a rather different hierarchy that arranges the categories in terms of degree of mental structure and human involvement Consequently, knowledge is still on the top, of highest human agency and result of what is called human belief structuring Below knowledge is information that is of in-mid human agency and an outcome of what is called human cognitive structuring, which is affected with data that falls behind information and of lower human agency More broadly, Rowley (2007) reaffirmed a similar hierarchy of data, information and knowledge and these categories are defined in terms of one another In the hierarchy, the amount of meaning, value or human contribution increases from lower level to upper level But there is much less agreement as to the transformation process that converts data into information and information into knowledge Whilst there is no clear consensus as to the differentiator between information and knowledge although this differentiator is basically around human understanding or action, the separator between data and information is merely meaning, not structure

Hence, in brief, for the conventional hierarchy, it is publicly recognized that, although the details differ, knowledge is defined in terms of information that in turn, is defined in terms of data (Rowley, 2007; Tuomi, 1999; Ulrich, 2001) In addition, for the relationships among categories or alternatively, transformation process, data is converted into information which is then converted into knowledge (Rowley, 2007; Tuomi, 1999; Minger, 2008)

Another kind of hierarchy is called the knowledge hierarchy or the iconoclastic hierarchy by its originator, Tuomi (1999) Braganza (2004) proposed the same viewpoint: data is more than knowledge For this reverse hierarchy, knowledge