Managing Information Overload Essay

In my opinion, organizations are likely to find better solutions thru informational overload using technical and social systems. Information overload has an ability to cause negative effects on an organizations performance. Within, technical and social systems there are a collection of complex components that solve problems within that system. Knowledge management uses the combination and utilization of technology at every phase that is available within the organization. Social and technical framework for management of knowledge is an appropriate method than an organization can use to handle problems due to information overload.

In using both a social and technical approach within an organization allows an individual to gain the most insight within their performance. The relationship between people and technology does not matter in the process of solving different performance problems within an organization.

The technical system is a tool used to identify problems within the organization that affect its performance. It supports the investment of knowledge management throughout the organization and its people.

In doing so, this move enhances the technology and people within the organization to be used as interface models, and IT blueprints to ensure technology is implemented. (Liu & Errey, 2006) Conducting of business is at its present day of age within information technology. Within, the work environments today, they currently have access to various tools that assist with effective communication. (Pijpers, 2010)

There is enough evidence to prove how these tools assist within an organization by keeping employees in an organization up-to-date, connect with others, remain productive and engage effectively with one another. In doing so, this shows the development of information technology thru internet and communicational technologies by bringing light problems to informational overload in addition to the increasing pace and development complexity in the society. (Strother 2012) Within an organization, many people find it difficult to deal with the information they receive within a continuous transformation in an organization with the increased unpredictable and complex effects on these actions. This leads the organization to stress and anxiety. (Blair 2010) This makes it challenging for the employees to comprehend the priorities in an organization and focus on the tasks that are achieved.

Within reference to the introduction of the module, socio-technological design can be effective in the diagnosis of information overload that are present and not present in other organizations. Without knowledge in an organization nothing is possible and it is necessary to identify which place and at what extent the challenge exists within an organization. For example, within an organization knowledge is in repositories, documents, routines, practices, and processes. Social interaction among members plays a huge role in searching for knowledge.

Knowledge management assists in renewing, developing, transferring, and sharing knowledge. This is based on produce value, economic wealth, and organizational performance. (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2010) This process creates value from its intellectual and knowledge based assets. Knowledge management leverges knowledge within an organization to provide a competititive edge. The fuctions within knowledge management acheives the goals of an organization to acquire additional knowledge within its operations to remain competitive. Management of knowledge can take the approach of being technology focused, people focused or social-technology focused. The people focus approach stresses that people are of primary importance in an organization. This results in developing and implementing significant strategies that encourage individuals to develop, store and disseminate knowledge.

However, this approach is unable to solve problems alone. Technology management under knowledge management deals with collecting, modifying, storing, and manipulating knowledge through the use of technological resources such as computers and other machinery. Similar to people focus approach, this approach is not able to provide solutions to existing problems alone (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2010) This assumption is made by intoducing new technology by solving the existing problems in performance. Performance is perceived by people as complicated. The two approaches of people focused, and technolgy focused are effective in their area of focus. Therefore, there is a need for a more effective knowledge management approach that is taking advantage of these strengths. (Grant & Shahsavarani)

Socio-technical refers to the balance between the social and technical systems that make up an organization. According to the perspective of socio-technical system, the capacity of an organization and its employees to perform effectively depends on knowledge. A systems concept seeks to emphasis a two way relationship between technology and individuals. A socio-technical design has a system of modifying changes, itself, and exploits creative capacities of human resource available for the organization.

Computers are unable to make practical and crucial decisions. This means the attention of the human should stay in the loop at all times. These findings are assessed and identified in researching the socio-technical approach to handle information overload. In doing so, it shows for an organization to store and develop its’ knowledge they need to consider its culture and

structuring roles. This ensures effective knowledge creation, sharing of information, and storage of an organizations reward system by motivating the employees to gain more knowledge. This is necessary for the organization to consider the huge significant role in the success of knowledge management initiative.

All in all, organizational knowledge and knowledge management is the storage of information and additional data. Individuals that possess this ability make effective decisions to determine the success of the knowledge management initiative. This study considers the most significant methods that an organization uses to handle various problems from information overload including its complexity affecting knowledge management (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2010) The most effective approach in an organization is to increase the capacity, advance the intelligence and knowledge of individuals by using the people approach. However, this approach may not be enough because of various intrinsic limitation of the human brain. Thus, by advancing the information processing capacity complements an individual’s decision by making capacity with the support of computers thru technology.

References

Blair, A. (2010, November 28). Information Overload, Then and Now. Retrieved from The Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/article/Information-Overload-Then-and/125479/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en I. Becerra-Fernandez & R. Sabherwal. (2010). Knowledge Management: Systems and Processes. New York: M.E. Sharpe. J. B. Strother, J. M. Ulijn & Z. Fazal. (2012). Information Overload: An International Challenge for Professional Engineers and Technical Communicators. New York: John Wiley. Levinson, M. (2012). Knowledge Management Definition and Solutions. Retrieved from CIO: http://www.cio.com/article/40343/Knowledge_Management_Definition_and_Solutions Liu, X. and Errey, C. . (2006, February). Socio-technical systems: There’s more to performance than new technology. Retrieved from ptgGlobal: http://www.ptg-global.com/PDFArticles/Socio%20technical%20systems%20-%20There’s%20more%20to%20performance%20than%20new%20technology%20v1.0.pdf Pijpers, G. (2010). Information Overload: A System for Better Managing Everyday Data. New York: John Wiley.