The impact of information management on organizations?

Information Technology provides several advantages to the organization; one such advantage is the ability of IT to link and enable employees (Dewett & Jones, 2001). Electronic communication increases the overall amount of communication within a firm. The most important aspect is that people from the various units of a corporation can interact with each other and thus horizontal communication is promoted. All the obvious advantages of quicker information availability is the outcome of this function of IT but it must also be remembered that too much electronic communication leads to increased alienation of employees due to increased impersonality. Relating to this, IT also increases boundary spanning. An individual can access any information in any part of the organization with the aid of the appropriate technology. This eliminates the need for the repetition of information and thus promotes non-redundancy.

IT's ability to store information means that the organization does not have to rely solely on the fallibility of human error, which is subject to error and erosion (Dewett & Jones, 2001). Information can be stored, retrieved and communicated far more easily and effectively. However, IT can often lead to information overload, meaning that managers have to sift through an insurmountable amount of stored data and thus hindering timely decision-making. This problem is not as serious as first thought, though. Information overload is not an IT problem but more of a documentation problem. Furthermore, management tend to adapt to IT problems once it gets used to the idea of the new technologies.