Organizational Structure And Information Sharing Culture

Managing information as an asset, also known as document and records management or content management is information that companies must protect. The information can be in the form of audio or video tapes, images, documents, hard drives, reports or individual knowledge known as tacit knowledge in the business industry. The value of the information and not the company infrastructure is where the greatest opportunity presents itself. Companies must focus their efforts on increased efficiency to manage all areas of information as company assets. Through management of information as an asset, companies can allow the appropriate access to qualified or

To understand the organizational culture of a company, one needs to start by looking at the history. Lakeshore Learning Materials was born from a divorced mother of three named Ethelyn Kaplan, who took a dream and a chance by moving her family to California in 1954 to open a toy store. When she started noticing that teachers were interested in her material, Ethelyn realized that she needed to expand her business into educational materials. 60 years later, Lakeshore Learning Materials has grown into a company with over 2000 employees, 60 retail stores throughout the United States and growing. Lakeshore Learning Materials is currently headed by Ethelyn’s grandsons, Bo and Josh Kaplan. Under the supervision of Bo and Josh, Lakeshore continues to be a leader in the Educational Materials, yet still able to keep the family culture that their grandmother started. Highest quality customer service and hard work are the core values that shape Lakeshore’s Organizational Strategy. These high expectations aren’t hard for employees at Lakeshore because the company is so loved by everyone that works there, that they give nothing less than the best.

Concept 8: The private, public, and non-profit sectors need to work as a team during crisis because it is not only up to the public sector to provide the necessary services during a disaster.

I have selected ‘Sainsbury’s’ as my organisation and I will explain the types of information used in my organisation. The following are:

Supplies could be needed in one area, but without communication that area might not be able to reach out for those supplies. Communication amongst first responders is important for information sharing, so that information can flow between different jurisdictions and agencies. When looking at the efforts of first responders, communication is the one constant variable, which without communication all efforts would be in vain. (Newman & Clarke, 2008) The National Incident Management System (NIMS) places an emphasis on the importance of communication when dealing with response efforts. The National Incident Management System shows how having a unified command systems can benefit the response efforts to disaster. However, without proper and efficient communication, a unified command system cannot proceed efficiently.

Q: Why is shared information so important in a learning organization in comparison to an efficient performance organization?

Organizational structure has been set up to facilitate all goal achievements. It is a way to motivate their employees and get them to work together. It also helps its employees to follow the organizations goals, and work together as a team. In order to do this, they need to have an organized structure to be able to run the company smoothly. A main foundation of every organization is to post their mission statement and goals everywhere so that their employees can see them. An organizational culture can consist of common shared beliefs and values that are established by the organization’s leader, and then communicated and reinforce through various methods, this helps shape employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding. Overall, organizational structure and culture can effect progress of many organizations in a positive and negative way.

When an organization does not use a holistic approach towards their culture, structure and systems, the organization could create a poor working environment for its employees and poor results for their customers. An example of culture, structure and systems not working well together can be seen in General Motors (GM). GM prior to its bankruptcy was seen to be a “highly bureaucratic company in which brands, departments and regions operated like self-governing and competing states with a federation” (Smerd, J. 2009).

John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, are attributed to the concept of “Resource Mobilization Theory” by linking formal organization to that of firms.

The ability to manage information plays a critical role in developing a firm’s capabilities in customer relationship management, process management and performance management (Mithas, 2011).

A good example of how these documents relate to action is during Hurricane Hugo in the Virgin Islands in which both FEMA and EPA were called to come up with their best emergency plans to control the damage done (Yavir 1991). Documents with similar strategies from both organizations were laid out and used in controlling the situation. This trend was improved in 2011 when FEMA and EPA signed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) which allows the two agencies to collaborate in disaster management. This document will alter some strategies from both agencies to ensure they work together without any conflicting factors during their operations (Memorandum of Agreement between FEMA and EPA 2011). John Harrald states in his article “Agility and Discipline: Critical Success Factors for Disaster Response” article that “social scientists and other disaster researchers have been documenting and describing the nonstructural factors such as improvisation, adaptability, and creativity that are critical to coordination, collaboration, and communication and successful problem solving (Harrald, 2006).” This portrays how agencies such as FEMA and EPA have come up with documented plans and strategies that are used during or after certain disasters that affect the organizations’ area of operation in disaster

Organizational communication began to arise in industrial businesses in the 20th century, analyzing the communication channels and the ways that information flows inside an organization (Cheney, 2007). Nowadays, every kind of business activity bears upon communication and functionality depends on competency of managers and employees to communicate efficaciously (Clausen,

the information systems of a national company with some of its current employees . The

Information is used in nearly all of the activities of organizations and establish the foundation for decisions making on strategic and operational levels (Haug, Zachariassen and Liempd, 2011). But the lack of proper communication and updating information can progress results in losing time on important factors and in frustration (ROWLEY, 1998). Although poor information management can have a negative significant impacts on the organisation competence, excessive infromation quality is a regularly vital with the organization success (Even and Shankaranarayanan, 2009). However, many industries experts’ surveys reveal that information management is part of the organization, to which several organizations appear not to provide plenty of attention or understand how to allocate with professionally (Marsh, 2005; Piprani & Ernst, 2008). Meanwhile Eppler and Helfert (2004) dispute that though there are many writings claiming that the cost of poor information management can be important in many organizations, only few findings reveal in what way to categorize, distinguish, and measure the costs of poor information management, meaning to create links casually between economic effects and poor information management (Eppler and Helfert(2004). This report will explore the following topics: Framework of Information Management, How Organization incur cost, Information quality and Impact of poor quality, The Cost and Maintenance of Poor Information effort and how the cost of information

Danone’s success is largely attributed to the knowledge and abilities of its employees. The sharing and retaining of this knowledge is extremely important in ensuring the long-term effectiveness of Danone. The Networking attitude initiative was launched at a Danone conference in the fall of 2002 as a means of circulating good practices and enabling the sharing of knowledge across groups in the geographically dispersed company (Edmonson et al, 2008, p. 1-8). Several tools have been developed as part of the initiative, most notably knowledge “marketplaces”, a “who’s who” internal directory system and sharing networks (Edmonson et al, 2008, p. 1). From 2004 to 2007, Danone employees shared almost 640 good practices with colleagues and overall, the Networking attitude initiative has made practical information accessible to about 5000 of the more than 9000 Danone managers around the world. The initiative has incurred very little cost and was seen highly successful by 86% of general managers according to an internal survey (Edmonson et al, 2008, p. 1).