SayPro Relating information needs and information competencies

Knowledge, on an individual basis, is located in the relationship between the subject and the object. It also corresponds to a set of information that is recognized and integrated by an individual in his or her memory, causing impact on behaviour and composing the knowledge accumulated throughout life. Knowledge, besides individual, also results from actions and collective reflections produced by the information practices of people’s groups. This process can create shared interpretations about the environment, new products and new capacities. It also makes it possible to select courses of action to reach objectives and commit resources and capacities. Organizational knowledge is based on the individuals’ professional knowledge and on the knowledge of the groups that compose the organization. It is also composed of three parts: an explicit part composed by norms, rules, manuals etc.; a tacit part that people make an effort to express and a cultural part usually included in the current behavioural system (Varela 1991; Hessen 2003; Carbone et al. 2005; and Choo 2006). The nature of the needs and the structure of the knowledge states are variables that should be investigated to identify information competencies.A cognitive dimension refers to both individual points of view and groups’ (or organizations’) point of view, expressing: history, structures and cognitive styles of information users. The cognitive approach, suggests that people are mediated, in their interactions, by states of knowledge about themselves, about those whom they interact with and/or about the problematic situations they face. Cognitive styles and individual preferences can influence the searching, processing and using of information. Cognitive consensus can be developed inside organizations. This makes possible a reasonable degree of common understanding and collective action, although individualized behaviour continues to exist. Organizational culture (a group of shared premises) can provide a structure for cognitive, behavioural and emotional answers. Organizations can also provide guidelines for individuals to deal with their cognitive limitations and directions for the attention flow that fills out gaps of information and removes discrepancies in one’s understanding (stereotypes; typologies of attitudes, sets of intentions and consequences; characterizations; scripts; memories; communication outlines). This framework provides sense making and an increased possibility of satisfactory actions (Belkin 1980, 1982; March 1994; Dervin 1998 and Choo 2006).Abilities can be related to the productive application of knowledge or, in other words, to the capability to search for the information gained in a previous experience to examine and to solve a problem (or to use stored knowledge in actions). They are the know-how: experiences acquired in practice, empirical procedures (recipes and work tricks) that cannot be standardized. Professional contexts and professional situations determine the development of abilities (Stroobants 2004; Carbone et al. 2005).The situational dimension refers to the beliefs and suppositions that are part of the individual’s culture and of his or her environment. It is a set of characteristics, opportunities and difficulties caused by the environment, structures of the existing problems and beliefs about what constitutes the solution of a problem. Among the factors that can influence the perception of in are: the roles played by the individual in the work environment; and the complexity of the problems, tasks and the environment itself. The more complex one’s task is the larger the amount of information used to deal with the exceptions and with the media richness. Furthermore, the more complex the situation is, the greater the uncertainty of being able to solve a problem. The information value, in a certain environment, depends on the requirements, norms and expectations of the user’s work and the organizational context. This can influence the nature and intensity of information needs, the construction of information and access to it and the capability to analyse the environment. The information use environment (geographical, organizational, social, intellectual and cultural) is a set of elements that affects the flow and the use of the messages, defines entities or groups of customers and determines the criteria by which the value of the information messages will be judged. The analysis of information use inside the environment needs to be translated into information terms; especially in organizations, where it is necessary to monitor, to interpret and to adapt the external information (Taylor 1986; Choo 2006). The value added to the information remains exact in this translation process, which is situational.Attitudes refer to social and emotional aspects, to preferences and interests, to the effort and the demand control conditions to express or to adopt some kind of behaviour. They are related to feelings or predispositions that determine the behaviour of one person in relation to other persons and also to the work or to the situation that people face. It is the person, his or her biography and socialization that determine how to act. The culture supplies the professional with a ‘box of symbolic tools’ with which s/he can model the outlines of adaptive behaviour. Knowing how to act includes personal qualities, social knowledge and common sense: these appear in cases where a problem is not explicit. Attitudes set a group of information that may influence individuals’ and groups’ actions (Brandão 1999; Le Boterf 2003; Bastos 2004; Stroobants 2004; Carbone et al. 2005).The affective dimension is related to the individual and organizational history, in terms of the progression of thoughts, feelings and perceptions experienced in moments of confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, expectation, accessibility and objectivity. This history drives the strategies and the decisions to search and use information. Although the emotional states are felt at an intra-personal level, it is in the socialization process that one learns in which contexts some feelings should be expressed or inhibited. The relationship between reason and emotion is that of interdependence. The emotional factors give quality to human relationships in the work environment. Besides the fact that feelings are a subjective experience, implicit and explicit emotional rules are established and transmitted within our ethnic groups, families, religions and workplaces. They express, in a certain way, the value system and the language that a person carries with them. The information process is systemic and even behaviour based on rules is threatened by uncertainty, ambiguity and inconsistency. This can generate stress, inducing feelings that can interfere in the decision to search for information. The process that transforms information into meanings involves not only thought and action, but also feelings ranging from confusion to frustration, from clarity to optimism. To search for information to formulate meanings in any subject, inside of a referential structure, is bound to be uncertain. Everything depends on the result of the assimilation of new information to the reference chart used to extend the knowledge on a subject (Kuhlthau 1991 1993; Wilson 1996 1999; Fineman 2001 and Gondim & Siqueira 2004).In short, accumulated knowledge is linked to the previous structure of one individual mind as the basis for the evolution of thoughts, which are his or her cognitive domain. The connection between know-how and the situational conditions exists in the measure that the work situation establishes forms to develop the search for and use of information and influences competency construction to deal with information. To know-how-to-act and the affective conditions are linked because the environment engenders the elements that influence the action of the professionals and the formation of their competencies. Attitudes connect emotional memories to paths once chosen when solving a problem. The theoretical proposition to analyse the research problem is: one’s visualized solutions to attend one’s information needs probably corresponds to one’s information competencies development to solve the problem, or to deal with knowledge gaps and/or with the sense of emptiness experienced when the environment changes.As increasingly powerful informatics systems are designed, developed, and implemented, they inevitably affect larger, more heterogeneous groups of people and more organizational areas. In turn, the major challenges to system success are often more behavioral than technical. Successfully introducing such systems into complex health care organizations requires an effective blend of good technical and good organizational skills. People who have low psychological ownership in a system and who vigorously resist its implementation can bring a “technically best” system to its knees. However, effective leadership can sharply reduce the behavioral resistance to change—including to new technologies—to achieve a more rapid and productive introduction of informatics technology. This paper looks at four major areas—why information system failures occur, the core theories supporting change management, the practical applications of change management, and the change management efforts in informaticsIt’s not the progress I mind, it’s the change I don’t like.—Mark TwainAlong with the inevitable failures, medical informatics has had many successes—probably more than should have been expected, given the challenges of the hardware, software, and infrastructure that faced us in the past. However, many of the successful systems were implemented as stand-alone systems that involved a modest number of people. Furthermore, the systems were often implemented in specific, limited areas that could see potential direct benefits from the systems. Typically, there were local champions, who made major and personal commitments to the success of the systems, and the enthusiasm of these champions was readily transmitted to the people with whom they worked directly. In turn, most of the people working on these systems felt like pioneers, and the literature of medical informatics is filled with their accomplishments.When we embark today on designing, developing, and implementing more complex systems that have wider impact, a new set of challenges looms even larger. Certainly, technical challenges still exist; they always will. However, as our new systems affect larger, more heterogeneous groups of people and more organizational areas, the major challenges to systems success often become more behavioral than technical.It has become apparent in recent years that successfully introducing major information systems into complex health care organizations requires an effective blend of good technical and good organizational skills. A “technically best” system can be brought to its knees by people who have low psychological ownership in the system and who vigorously resist its implementation. The leader who knows how to manage the organizational impact of information systems can sharply reduce the behavioral resistance to change, including to new technology, to achieve a more rapid and productive introduction of information technology.Knowledge of the significance of people and organizational issues is not new. One of our informatics pioneers, Octo Barnett, identified political and organizational factors as being important 30 years ago.1 However, given the realities of that era, they were “well down the list.” By 1998, Reed Gardner, another definite pioneer, stated in his Davies Lecture2:In my opinion, the success of a project is perhaps 80 percent dependent on the development of the social and political interaction skills of the developer and 20 percent or less on the implementation of the hardware and software technology!We are seeing a shift in the balance of the people and organizational issues as opposed to the technical issues. An effective medical informatics change strategy can help convert what health care organizations are experiencing today—technology-centered tension—into welcomed opportunities that will lead to improvement in all phases of the health care process.The content that supports both the intellectual content and strategy for this cornerstone comes from multiple disciplines, e.g. psychology, sociology, management, and anthropology. This paper discusses four major topics—why information system failures occur, the core theories supporting change management, the practical applications of change management, and the change management efforts in informatics.Why Do Information System Failures Occur?If only it weren’t for the people, those awful people, always getting tangled up with the systems. If it weren’t for them, the health care area would be an informatician’s paradise.*Complex problems rarely have simple solutions. During the many stages of the solution process, there are numerous opportunities to go wrong, whether the solution tends to be a technical one or not. As we delve into increasingly complex medical informatics problems, we will increasingly face this challenge. In reviewing information system failures cited in the literature as well as drawing on our personal observations and experiences, we have seen the rising importance of the human issues that are often referred to as people and organizational issues.A case study was conducted to study information needs and competencies of the off-site supervision of financial institutions professionals in Brazil, using a united theoretical basis: the research construct expressed mainly by Figure 1. Information parameters (or information science parameters) were also used.The object of study was the Central Bank of Brazil. The focus of the study was the activity of off-site supervision, responsible for the monitoring of the Brazilian financial system. The professional group considered in the research was composed of the decision-making group (eight people) and other professionals linked to the off-site supervision tasks (forty-seven people).The data collection was conducted according to the following group of procedures: information needs mapping followed Le Coadic’s (1998 )propositions; and information competencies mapping followed the procedures suggested by Zarifian (2003). A combination of research techniques was used, making possible a slowly deepening understanding of the supervisors’ sense-making as information users and of the development of their competencies. The research was conducted in four successive and interactive phases, ending up in a final theoretical construction:

1. in the first phase, document research was used. The objective was to define the activity to be studied; to characterize the organization and the organizational unit that executed the tasks and to define the population and the professional group of the research;
2. in the second phase, interviewing was the chosen technique. People in decision-making positions were consulted to identify the Critical Success Factors of the activity. They were those people whose position would allow them to have information about the organization, its strategy and the essential factors that have influence on its operational aspects. The method tries to identify the characteristics, conditions, or variables that should be managed and properly monitored. These factors could be used to define information needs and the essential characteristics of an activity or organization. The technique, proposed by Rockart (1979), contemplates interviews in two or three separate sessions: in the first session, the executives’ goals are listed and the success factors identified are discussed; a second session is held to review the information generated and a third session is held to obtain a final result;
3. in the third phase of the research, participant observation was used to map processes, tasks, problems and problematic situations, documents and information frequently used, information products and services, information technology used in the environment, factors that would drive people to search for information, knowledge and abilities developed in daily tasks and professionals’ attitudes to the workplace. The influence of the organizational structure and hierarchy was also observed in the professionals’ daily work life;
4. in the last phase, for evaluation of all the information obtained and final data triangulation, focus groups were used. It was possible to compare all the data and information gathered during the entire research process and to confirm the researchers’ analyses vis-à-vis the opinion of the professionals studied.

The data recording techniques were the researcher’s field notes and a tape recorder. The instruments of data collection were six question discussion tables, prepared in different phases of the research and the instrument ‘Completing the sentences’. Content analysis was used to analyse the interviews and the field notes (thematic analysis by category) and discourse analysis was used to analyse the instrument ‘completing the sentences’..Please visit our website at www.saypro.online Email: info@saypro.online Email: info@saypro.online Call: + 27 11 071 1903 WhatsApp: + 27 84 313 7407. Comment below for any questions and feedback. For SayPro Courses, SayPro Jobs, SayPro Community Development, SayPro Products, SayPro Services, SayPro Consulting, and SayPro Advisory visit our website to www.saypro.online