What is it about?
Information use is often reduced to matters of technology. While technological developments are important influences, also important are factors that shape what managers consider to be information. Based on an investigation of the ways in which managers conceive of information, the article suggests that we need a way of bringing the broader context of, for example, organisational history and culture into the equation. I suggest that critical realism offers one helpful way of doing this, although I now (2019) regret the title. I should have referred to Archer's morphogenetic framework (based on critical realism) as, strictly speaking, critical realism is a philosophical approach, not a substantive theory
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Why is it important?
When I wrote this article, there was relatively little written about the use of information by managers, as opposed to technological developments. Taken with my other work on information literacy, the article offers a way of considering information use.
Perspectives
As a result of this article, I undertook to explore information use in much more detail in one particular setting, that on licensed retail - or, in plain language, pubs! That led me to consider broader historical influences and in turn to work on the shaping of conceptions of information use by religious practices, particularly in Scotland. So this article might be showing its age now; I pick up many of the themes in more detail in subsequent books - for the brewing industry in my Strategic and Organizational Change (Routledge, 2006) and the more general points about information use in my text Managing information and Knowledge in Organizations (Routledge, 2008)
Dr Alistair Mutch
Nottingham Trent University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Critical Realism, Managers and Information, British Journal of Management, December 1999, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.00142.
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