Refereed Publications Abstract

MORE THAN AN ANSWER: INFORMATION RELATIONSHIPS FOR ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE

Research on organizational information processing, managerial cognition, and social networks demonstrates that people rely on other people for information. However, this work has not specified how seeking information from other people results in actionable knowledge – knowledge directed at making progress on relatively short term projects. This research employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate how personal sources of information contribute to actionable knowledge. Qualitative inquiry found that people cultivate different kinds of information relationships that are the source of five components of actionable knowledge:

1. Solutions (both know-what and know-how)
2. Reference knowledge (pointers to other people or databases)
3. Problem reformulation
4. Validating information
5. Legitimating information

A quantitative sample survey study revealed that, while source expertise predicted receipt of these components of actionable knowledge, so too did expertise of the seeker and features of the relationship between the seeker and source. We drew implications from these findings for the study of social capital and organizational learning.

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