A scale for measuring information management in organisations

Abstract

A scale for measuring information management in organisations. The world is abandoning the industrial age and is entering a new era. This shift, which Piore and Sabel (1984) have defined as “the second industrial revolution”, has been analysed in a large number of articles and books and has received a variety of denominations. Tofller (1981) used the term “third wave”, whereas Drucker (1993) labelled it post-capitalism. These experts, together with numerous researchers who have studied this transition, believe that a myriad of chances with various causes are involved in this revolution. Amongst the possible reasons for this shift are greater competitive pressures, the exhaustion of mass markets and growth in the highly qualified workforce. Together with these possible causes, nearly all authors highlight the role of information technologies (ITs) in this transformation (Hitt & Brynjolfsson, 1997; Rivard, Raymond & Verreault, 2006). Despite extensive literature on infor-mation systems and information mana-gement strategy (Sabherwal & Chan, 2001), research centred on the efficient use of information as a resource hi-ghlights the need to redefine the functions attributed to information systems. In addi-tion, these functions should be enriched with organisational information policies. This conceptualisation of information management, stemming from functions needed for efficient information manage-ment throughout the whole information life cycle, focuses attention on the use of information rather than on technological aspects upon which most concepts in the information systems management litera-ture are based.