Information Culture and Business Performance

Abstract

The Project A market-geared company thrives through the transformation of its resources.These resources can be either primary or secondary.Primary resources are essential for the acquisition and utilization of other kinds of resources.In many companies, the main primary resources are the momentary ones.Inflow of capital into the organization is a prerequisite for the acquisition of other resources needed for its activities, such as employees, raw materiais, and technological production facilities.Together, these components constitute the basis of the company's material resource transformations (Fig. 1).A company possessing these funds and supplies is not yet productive, unless a transformation of intellectual resources is maintained alongside the transformation of material resources.The primary resources for this transformation are varying kinds of knowledge and information.The output achieved is a processed intellectual product which is necessary for the material activities to function and develop positively (Fig. 2).At present, companies are investing heavily in optimizing the transformation of material resources.Training, computerization, administration, target-orientation, strategie planning, and rationalization are the means by which basic resources achieve optimally efficient production.But whatever happened to the intellectual transformation process?Some companies have started regarding it as essential and worth investing in, while others have developed it only very little or not at all.In the former case, information is used as a resource; in the latter, rather as a product.'In early 1986, the Department of Library and Information Science of Äbo Akademi -The Swedis'h University of Finland -launched a project investigating these questions.A specific aim of the project is the analysis of the factors determining information culture in a business environment.The target groups chosen were on the one hand the small and medium-sized metalworking companies and, on the other hand, the giants of the field.Thirty-nine Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) were interviewed.The technique applied was a semi-structured thematic interview lasting for several hours per interviewee.Every interview was tape-recorded and transcribed.Responses were graded (é) In/ernational Association of Technological University Libraries

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