A Systems Theory of Organizational Information

Abstract

Standing on both the Peircean pragmatism semiotics and the Churchmanian systems thinking, this chapter is an empirically grounded conceptualization of the phenomena of organizational information in terms of the nature and the formulation process of information in organizations. By the author's systemic conception, organizational information would be a unity that comprises six nonexclusive aspects: structure, function, process, context, time, and epistemology. From the relational perspective, organizational information would manifest itself as a dynamically triadic process that comprises three states of mind (i.e., surprise, doubt, and belief) and three human activities (i.e., experience, abduction, and inquiry). The author's system of organizational information introduces a foundational framework for both information and organization domains, which offers that information and organization constitute each other. The author also posits that the model of organizational information would imply an information paradigm for and hence a theory native to the information systems and knowledge management field.