Information Overload in Industrial Enterprises - Results of an Empirical Investigation

The work presented is part of the research field information logistics, which investigates and develops concepts and technologies for improving information flow in organisations. The intention of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of information management problems in enterprises, and also improvement potentials of current information systems, The paper presents results of a study focusing on information overload in industrial enterprises, an area that previously has attracted little academic attention. Two areas are investigated: is information overload perceived as a problem in enterprises, and which application areas of enterprise information management should be prioritised for improvement activities? The survey was sent to 436 enterprises in the South of Sweden, most of them small and medium-sized enterprises, and received 164 valid responses. The sample used for the paper includes industrial enterprises from manufacturing, construction, and electronics industries, which accounts for approximately 80% of the responses. When analysing the data from the study, the paper follows the opinion of various scholars in the field that the complexity of an application case is an essential parameter to take into account when deciding on improvement potential. The more complex the application scenario is, the more likely is the usefulness of IT solutions for improving information flow. Research on complexity of projects proposes to define complexity as "consisting of many varied interrelated parts", to distinguish between organisational and technological complexity, and to operationalise this in terms of "differentiation and interdependence". One result of the study is a clear indication that information overload is perceived as a problem in industrial enterprises, which surfaces in problems such as finding the right information needed for a work task, and in the time needed to structure and store information. Furthermore, the results indicate two application areas that offer improvement potential: information management with focus on search and retrieval, and management of product information.