Information Management for Organizational Effectiveness
Wednesday, 15 Oct 2025 | Review of organizational culture module
This page was set up for the possibility that we would not have an alum to speak with us. Happily, we do have an alum to speak with us and OverthinkTank will lead the Q&A session with him.
Our guest is a 2014 graduate of UNC, with a BSIS and a 2016 graduate with an MSIS.
What have we learned about organizational cultures?
A short discussion of the place of structure in an organizational design
The group leading the session may choose to substitute a different item to view.
robust apprenticeship program key to germany's manufacturing might
U.S. firms often complain about a lack of skilled workers, but the U.S. has struggled to create widespread apprentice programs. Felix Rauner says growing a viable American apprenticeship system will be difficult. Partly because the U.S. has historically had a barrier between schools and business, and partly because of the fractured nature of U.S. education, with 50 states in charge.
by John Ydstie, NPR, 04 January 2018
The group leading the session may choose to substitute a different item to read.
You don't have to read these unless you wish to ...
... but we might touch upon them in conversation
... with regard to information, reengineering directs attention to the information that flows across longitudinal links. This information helps to coordinate the complementary activities that make up a firm's critical process ... Such a focus is undoubtedly invaluable for organizations. Nonetheless, focusing on longitudinal process and the information that goes with it may lead to tunnel vision. Although reengineered organizational charts may happily represent organizations in terms of these types of process, neither linear processes nor charts encompass all that goes on in organizations. It is not surprising, then, that business process reengineering has had less success in the parts of organizations that are less linear and less clearly defined by process and information. Management, for example, has proved notoriously hard to reengineer. So has R&D. In such areas, life is less linear; inputs and outputs are less well defined; and information is less "targeted." These are, rather, areas where making sense, interpreting, and understanding are both problematic and highly valued-areas where, above all, meaning and knowledge are at a premium.
Read chapter 4 in The Social Life of Information, a bit more from a classic on information and organizations, it might prove illuminating.
The group leading the session may choose to substitute a different item to read.