The Ambiguity that Surrounds Information Strategy

Abstract

Introduction Irrespective of organisation, discipline, or sector notion of has and will continue to have a huge influence over activities, operations, and strategy. The role and use of emerges from 'need' of organisations to understand their customers and processes better. The inference, from much of literature, suggests that organisations will achieve competitive advantage and therefore differentiate themselves from their competitors. The result of this approach encourages organisations focus upon collection, collation, analysis, interpretation, and distribution of to all areas of organisation. The mechanism that has been used to support this process has been through use (and abuse) of technology. Technology allows management of huge amounts of at a fraction of time and cost that has been attributed to this process historically. In conjunction with above internally focussed approach to information, there has also been an external view. That is, organisations operate within what has been termed economy (Peppers & Rogers, 2011) or society, where Beynon-Davies (2009, p. 3) argues that the way in which is increasingly regarded as an important economic 'commodity' has influenced organisational actions. This external influence expands to terms such as age or even knowledge society, all of which align and encourage a focus upon and relationship with as a strategic activity within businesses and organisations (Athique, 2013; Belanger & Van Slyke, 2012; Drucker, 1969; Duff, 2002). This focus and involvement with continues to-date, for many of reasons raised previously, even though discussion and debate that surrounds within organisations has been prevalent for past 50 years, for example, Ackoff (1967) identifies that term is simply misleading, Wilson (1986, p.12) states that when we look more closely at nature of information, that everyday certainty about its character disappears, Boland (1987, p. 377) argues that information is not a resource to be stockpiled as one more factor of production, and Davenport (Davenport, 1997; Davenport, Eccles, & Prusak, 1992) argues that gaining agreement within organisations in regards to terms and definitions is problematic. The importance placed upon organisations to manage their and subsequently their knowledge has been cited as a major factor in organisations achieving success (Drucker, 2002; Harris, 1993). This relationship between and organisational success, author would argue, has been tenuous link many organisations have used as impetus to formulate an strategy. It is suggested that organisations have misjudged, misinterpreted, and misaligned notion of an strategy and as such implies why ambiguous nature of an strategy pervades (Knox, 2009; Mutch, 2008; Neyland & Surridge, 2002; Pearlson & Saunders, 2013). The view that there are multiple interpretations and definitions of a commonly used term, 'information' (Knox 2009), based on various factors all of which are valid, from individual perspective, infers that formulating an strategy as a mechanism for managing becomes problematical, ambiguous, and leads author to view that an strategy becomes one of either: * Placation--where strategy is 'seen to be written' , as opposed to * Implementation--where strategy is 'written to be seen' It is within field of higher education that author can infer that to-date majority of strategies identified fall into former as opposed to latter. That is, strategies that were identified as strategies were in fact misjudged and misaligned with other traditional strategies found within organisational context, i. …