This paper argues that organizations are best positioned to solve the problem of information overload by making changes to both their technical systems and their social/human systems. Drawing on research into socio-technical dynamics, the paper contends that obsolete hardware and software create barriers to information access, while purely technical upgrades fail when human factors — such as poor management, inadequate incentives, and lack of training — go unaddressed. Conversely, relying solely on human adaptation cannot compensate for outdated technology. The paper examines real-world organizational examples and invokes the DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) hierarchy to argue that human wisdom remains irreplaceable, making a hybrid technical-social approach essential for managing modern information overload.
Information overload is a continuous problem affecting all types of modern organizations. In order to adequately deal with this problem, technical systems should be repeatedly assessed and upgraded as often as practicable to handle information and minimize its overload. In addition, social and human systems must be continually assessed and changed as often as practicable to handle information and minimize overload. Given the vital human-machine relationship inherent in any organization, the problem of information overload is better solved through changes to both technical and social systems.
Organizations are likely to find better solutions to information overload through changes to both their technical and social systems. This is true for at least two reasons, presented here in no particular order of importance.
First, technical systems should be repeatedly assessed and upgraded as often as practicable to handle information and minimize its overload. Drawing on both personal experience and research, obsolete hardware and software can make electronic records extremely difficult or even impossible to read (Blair, 2010). In addition, as the flood of information continually rises, new and better technical tools for collecting, sorting, storing, selecting, and summarizing are vital for handling that information with unavoidably limited resources — including but not limited to money, time, staff, energy, and other assets (Blair, 2010).
Second, purely technical changes in an organization's systems cannot cure or replace certain human factors that vitally affect an organization. In the face of an organizational problem, the mere introduction of new technology ignores the "two-way relationship between people and machines" (Errey & Liu, 2006, p. 1) and may fail to solve — or even exacerbate — the problem, because it does not account for both negative and positive human factors. If organizational policies and practices create a counterproductive situation, such as Errey's and Liu's example in which employees were not given adequate incentive to cross-sell or refer leads, new technology will not solve the problem of low cross-selling or lead referral. Rather, the organization must also employ adequate incentives for humans to cross-sell and refer leads (Errey & Liu, 2006, p. 2).
On the other hand, technology cannot replace the positive and exclusively human trait of wisdom — the ability to employ data (symbols), information (processed data), knowledge (the application of data and information), and understanding (the synthesis of knowledge to create new knowledge) in order to envision, design, assess, and continually improve the optimum human-technical organization. This DIKW hierarchy — Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom — highlights that human judgment remains an irreplaceable organizational asset (Bellinger, Castro, & Mills, 2004).
Certainly, there are arguments — or at least common practices — that disagree with the need for changes in both technical and social systems to handle information overload. Some organizations overemphasize technical aspects and minimize the importance of human wisdom, or even negate it entirely (Green, 2010). Other organizations fail to account for negative human factors such as the lack of incentive or training (Errey & Liu, 2006, pp. 2–3).
Examples can be seen in organizations that merely treat symptoms of an organizational problem as a purely technical matter, deploy new hardware and software to address the problem, and ultimately fail to remedy it because they have not accounted for invaluable human wisdom and/or poor human performance management. Errey and Liu provide insightful examples of technical changes made to remedy performance problems in a financial institution, a call center, and an airline — none of which accounted for human wisdom or poor employee management. Those technical changes failed to remedy the problems because they did not account for the ability of humans to assess and remedy problems, nor did they address poor management practices such as a lack of incentives and training (Errey & Liu, 2006, pp. 2–3). Ignoring the necessary social and human element of organizations leads to technical changes that are inadequate to solve an organization's information problems.
The overemphasis of social systems to the detriment of needed technical changes also works against the hybrid technical-social approach necessary to effectively deal with information overload. Inherent in Blair's explanation of the difficulty in accessing and reading electronic records with obsolete hardware and software is the organizational practice of relying on humans to compensate for those obsolete systems (Blair, 2010). Some organizations force employees — who already face unavoidably limited resources, including money, time, staff, and energy — to compensate for outdated technology.
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