The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions

Integrating new research and examples throughout, the second edition of The Knowing Organization links the broad areas of organizational behavior and information management. It looks at how organizations behave as information-seeking, information-creating, and information-using communities and introduces a unifying framework to show how organizations create meaning, knowledge, and action.

The book provides a model of how organizations use information strategically to adapt to external change and to foster internal growth. This model examines how people and groups within organizations use information to create an identity and a shared context for action and reflection; to develop new knowledge and new capabilities; and to make decisions that commit resources and capabilities to purposeful action. The second edition features new and expanded chapters on information failures, organizational learning, knowledge creation, and information-seeking behavior.

The Knowing Organization, Second Edition, is ideal for graduate courses in information science, organizational behavior, organizational communications, and management information systems.

Chun Wei Choo is Professor of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. His recent books include The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge (OUP, 2002), Information Management for the Intelligent Organization (2001), and Web Work: Information Seeking and Knowledge Work on the World Wide Web (2000).