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Two different but related aspects of digital accessibility affect the concept of information value in organizations and how that value is impacted: the impact of digital accessibility on the organizational hierarchy and the resulting effect on information value; and the possible differentiation in information value resulting both from variations in the pace of infusion of information technology into the organization and from differing attitudes toward the positioning and extent of expenditures on information technology by the organization. Organizational structure is an information transfer system designed to service groups or individuals to permit the completion of the tasks and missions of the organization. Typically, until the advent of modern information technology, an organization's structure was a relatively inflexible hierarchical channel through which information flowed, or sometimes trickled, dependent upon one's position in the channel. The role of the individual or group within the organization fairly well dictated the level, quality and character of the information access available. The position of an individual in a specific location in the channel also tended to form the image or self-perception that the individual held of his or her role in the organization and even lent to the creation of an image of the organization itself. The combined images of self and organizational structures worked together to form the basis for the interactions of the individual with the organization: who could be directly approached for information and who had to be approached via a series of other individuals. Further, these combined images influenced the methods used in hierarchical communications. Speaking with one's immediate supervisor might be acceptable for addressing some issues; other issues required written communications. In either case, the individual's style of presentation and interaction was affected by the perceptions of both self role and the organizational structure. Concomitant to these perceptions of role and structure is the notion of organizational culture, which includes the history and environment that formed the existing communications pathways. The value ascribed to any communications up or down the channel can be impacted by any or all of these components. For example, an individual's position in the hierarchy attaches certain value to information regardless of the actual value. The structure, the layers of authority, the hierarchy of communication, the style and method or presentation, the players and their roles—all these contribute to the information system of an organization, and each component influences the valuing of the information communicated through that system. The information or communications system is the infrastructure base of the organization, is a major reason for having a formal structure, and is key to the decision-making functions of the organization. This system has been profoundly affected by the advent of information technology. According to D.A. Nadler, "Information technology has begun to revolutionize organizational design by providing alternatives to hierarchy as the primary means of coordination" and information transfer. Several variations on the traditional organization have emerged: self-managed teams; high performance work systems that emphasize the integration of advanced tools like expert systems with modified worker organizations; increased joint ventures between companies; greater collaboration inside and outside organizations; and outsourcing. Essentially, the evolution of computer technology, and especially networking systems, has impacted every aspect of the traditional organization. Electronic mail, electronic bulletin boards, shared iles and other similar systems allow information transfer without the typical channels of hierarchy, breaking down rigid organizational structures by circumventing that hierarchy and allowing information to flow through the electronic structure rather than the traditional one. This openness is what allows organizations to expand the personnel involved in projects and to network outside of themselves. Boundaries become blurred, both within the work groups and within the organization. Decision making becomes less centralized, more dispersed and, certainly at some levels, less institutional in nature. The composition of the organization changes. Over time even the "walls" of the organization change to encompass the customers within the evolving information net. As some organizations have experienced, the voice—or rather e-mail—of the customers can indeed cause them to appear to be interior to the organization. The potential for such close contact, whether among customers and organizations or workers within organizations, can have both positive and negative consequences. It may be assumed that despite the ability to do so, individuals will not rashly travel outside the bounds of the traditional structures, will not skip all the levels of the hierarchy to satisfy a desire to communicate directly with the ultimate boss, but there is actually little beyond common sense and organizational culture to prevent this. Though face-to-face encounters between the extremes of the hierarchy would be unlikely, or confined to very specific situational circumstances, electronic encounters are not so constrained. The newest technology, along with changing views of the criticality of the customer, seems to be opening more communication avenues to all levels of the organization. Customers can have near instant access to an organization via the Web or e-mail and what they cannot access they certainly can and do discuss. Failure to respond can be devastating: as an example, one computer producer able to handle only 4000 of the 10,000 calls a day being received was attacked on the Internet with messages of complaint and displeasure that cost the company a great deal of business. Significant growth in the use of the Internet, particularly the graphical side—the Web—to share and gather information with potential customers has occurred in the last three years. The advent of improved browsers and relatively easy HTML authoring tools has enhanced the ability of organizations to create sites and increased the pressure to have a presence on the Web. Incorporation of this information technology into the information transfer system is rapidly becoming ubiquitous as part of the organizational structure across all sectors, with significant impact on information flow and information value. In today's environment consumers are responsive and insistent, expecting feedback as quickly as they can type in requests. Repeat e-mail messages come less than 10 minutes apart, as senders expect a resolution of their issues immediately. Messages or postings appear that seem to assume everyone else in the world is attending to e-mail or bulletin boards at the same time. Organizations and individual employees are having to devise schemes to provide timely responses to even the most trivial electronic inquiry, because any message can be the start of a public display of anger that can cost consumer confidence or a frenzy of complaints from others who have felt slighted but who were not previously motivated to report. Electronic accessibility is inserting the consumer, the customer, or even just the casual, unrelated computer user into the structure of any organization that has assumed an electronic presence. The impact of this electronic information stream varies. Out of self-defense some administrators, high profile scientists, CEOs and the like make public announcements that they do not respond directly to e-mail. One obvious problem with the electronic system is the time one must invest to keep current with the messages, to keep one's message spaces uncluttered. Neither time nor space necessarily impact electronic communications, so long as the system is accessible. Several questions arise in reference to this changing scene, in which there is increased accessibility both from within the organization and from the outside to the decision-making levels of the organization: How does one manage the impact of this changed information system on the organization? What channels of communication need to be kept in place and which are obsolete, if indeed any are? What information value system will be in place, and how will it differ from the information value system of the hierarchical organization? If customers are to be internally involved in the organization, what are the boundaries, if there are any? Most organizations have changed, but despite the predictions of the 60s, 70s and 80s that information technology would decrease the levels of hierarchy and flatten the structure significantly, flattened is probably not the appropriate interpretation of what has occurred. Though organizations have decreased the layers of hierarchy by one or two levels, this has not positioned everyone on the same stairs of the hierarchy. Decision making may be more distributed due to improved technology, but it is not horizontal. Methods of communication and channels for control of communication have changed not only in relation to the increased technology, but also in relation to changes in the larger social environment. Information technology allows anyone with access to communicate with anyone else in the network. However, the organizational culture and common sense can serve to control these communications relatively well. Agreed upon standards and procedures for the use of electronic mail as well as other communications systems channels can limit inappropriate use. Just as there are rules to govern use of phones in the work place, or appropriate procedures for filing a complaint, similar rules and procedures can be delineated related to the use of information technology. Although enhanced digital accessibility may have the potential of providing total elimination of hierarchical information flow, removal of all the channels for control of communication could cause chaos. Whatever minimal control channels are necessary to provide organizational structure need to be maintained, but with enough flexibility to allow communications advantageous to the organization. The issue of valuing the information that is to be communicated through the electronic systems has to be confronted at various levels. From without, customer input can help identify new markets or point out repairable shortcomings. From within, members of the organization may see things that others miss that could lead to new opportunities. As always, determining what information is valuable is dependent on factors far beyond the control of the sender and often not fully understood by the recipient. So long as no information is discarded without examination, there is at least some chance that items of value will not be lost. The task of examining all incoming information can overwhelm, undermining the ability to recognize valuable information. The increase in customer information that results from the juncture of digital accessibility, increased responsiveness to customer needs and enhanced customer orientation as the focus of the organization poses significant challenges in managing information flow and in assessing information value. Streamlining information is more easily achieved in managing employee input, limiting communication and reports to what is determined to be critical, but it is not possible to completely streamline customer input. The use of online surveys helps to delineate some of the customer input, but none of it can be overlooked. As mentioned before, ignoring customer input can be a costly error. The issue of boundaries for customers involved internally in the organization is a very difficult one. The consumer public can sow havoc when dissatisfied. Between the phone and the computer, there are few limits to the contacts the public can make, and using a global medium like the Internet can certainly lend volume to one's words. Being able to e-mail the CEO or the president grants a sense of democratic power, but such power is not always responsibly exercised. How to cope with what might be serious charges or just angry misinterpretations is a challenge. Each organization will make decisions about these challenges based on its customer base, its receptivity to customer input, its ability to divine the real from the unreal. The bottom line is that the customer cannot be ignored, must never be insulted and should always be listened to. The wise organization will have some means to analyze and evaluate the various situations rising from customer intervention in information flow. The boundaries will have to be set by the organization, but without a doubt those boundaries will be challenged. In addition to the increased accessibility provided by electronic systems and the resulting change in information flow and value within an organization, another significant factor influencing changes in information flow has been the practice of not providing every member of the organization with access to the information technology necessary to participate in the new communication systems, often with cost as a justification for this selective dissemination approach. Transitional organizational states, where information technology is not fully installed or implemented, can have negative effects on the organization at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level, because there has been global growth in the implementation of information technology (IT) as a resource expanding tool, organizations ignoring IT or not fully utilizing it risk losing markets, limiting growth potential and failing to recognize and exploit opportunities. On the micro level, individuals without information technology access are limited in job growth, job security, future employment potential and critical information. Diminished workers, not keeping current, ultimately cost organizations in a variety of arenas. Individuals without information resources cannot contribute to the organization at the same level as other workers. Workers without the technology are relegated to the traditional hierarchy, whereas those with technology access have access tothe changing style of decision making. Within the organization, information technology access is not just possession of the machines; it also involves having or acquiring appropriate technical skills. Training and currency with information technology is considered critical by workers for job satisfaction and likewise critical by employers seeking to maintain a stable, functional information systems work force. An artificial hierarchy based on possession of and skill with technology is created, and such an artificial-structure impedes an organization's—or a society's—growth through negative impacts related to the differential valuing of information technology in comparison with other factors. Undeserved stature may be accorded to information that is transferred using the new technology, while information that is transmitted by traditional means or through the traditional hierarchy may be falsely devalued. The possession of technical skills may give individuals additional rank and authority, while diminishing the rank and authority of less technically skilled workers, regardless of other career-related criteria. Sometimes the trade-off is the loss of years of organizational knowledge and culture, as in the early retirement of key workers who for a variety of reasons are not given access to the technology or are not provided with training. While such retirements are often viewed positively, the changing organization structure may not be as well positioned as some may think. The information lost with those types of retirements cannot be replaced or recouped by technology. The insight that a long-time employee might have into the current and future activities of an organization based upon the time in place and experiential knowledge is lost, and the value of this lost information may be unrecognized potential diversification or markets. IT staff are not necessarily in possession of enough information to appropriately outfit the entire organization, and the devaluing of non-technologically generated information may have long-term consequences. The unreasonable expectation that the IT staff should be able to understand every individual task of the organization may have led to the unmet expectations of the early IT years. More realistically, successful organizations are encouraging the involvement of non-IT staff in IT acquisitions, design and implementation. This two-fold strategy empowers the employee while investing him or her in the job and recognizes a diversity of information values. Determining, with help from the IT staff, what hardware and software will best help perform the job causes the employee to take responsibility and also commits her or him to the organization. Revamping, upgrading or expanding organizations are spending large sums of money on information technology initiatives. Eli Lilly is spending $75 million on a four-year redesign/reengineering effort thatwill enable the company to reach clinics directly and physicians and pharmacists in their offices. The world's largest discount brokerage, Charles Schwab Corp., is converting its information system to client/server technology over a seven-year time frame. According to various estimates, the 1994 per employee expenditure for information technology by the top 100 users worldwide ranged from a low of $10,000 to a high of $27,000. Though one might suppose that this pattern of expenditure on technology would engender enormous information systems staff, creating yet another layer of management and a modern sub-hierarchy in all companies, two different surveys conducted by Computerworld magazine suggest that is not necessarily so. In fact, the surveys found several large multinational organizations with huge numbers of information system employees and others with relatively small staffs supporting revenue bases of almost the same size. The differential patterns of expenditure suggest possible differential valuing of information among the organizations. Reaching such a conclusion on the premise that the valuing of information by the organization is positively correlated with the amount of money spent and the number of employees dedicated to management of information flow would be dangerous—and probably incorrect. One must ask the question, however, why the differing patterns exist and what the patterns indicate about the value of information to the organization. It seems reasonable to assume that information technology should be integrated throughout the organization, regardless of any centralized information technology group, since the role and advantage of IT are having it permeate the organization to maximize the flow of information and the exchange of ideas. Though the supposition that IT would flatten the hierarchy has been shown to be questionable, it is not debatable that IT affects the structure, viathe technology, via the skilled personnel it demands and via the skills that the typical worker can now acquire to implement IT (because the technology has improved even if the quality of the employee has not). Small organizations wishing to survive must keep as current as possible without negatively impacting their economic positions. This can best be achieved by flexibility and resolute attention to the mission of the organization and sensitivity to the customer base. Not to be overlooked is attention to the information itself, not just the technology. What the organization needs to know, what creative activities are ongoing, what each sector contributes and how economically viable each contribution is means as much to the survival of the organization as does investment in technology. Sometimes too much information, or too much technology, can decrease efficiency.
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