Social cognitive theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social cognitive theory (SCT), used in psychology, education, and communication, holds that portions of an individual's knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside media influences. This theory was advanced by Albert Bandura as an extension of his social learning theory. The theory states that when people observe a model performing a behavior and the consequences of that behavior, they remember the sequence of events and use this information to guide subsequent behaviors. Observing a model can also prompt the viewer to engage in behavior they already learned. In other words, people do not learn new behaviors solely by trying them and either succeeding or failing, but rather, the survival of humanity is dependent upon the replication of the actions of others. Depending on whether people are rewarded or punished for their behavior and the outcome of the behavior, the observer may choose to replicate behavior modeled. Media provides models for a vast array of people in many different environmental settings.

History

The conceptual roots for social cognitive theory come from Edwin B. Holt and Harold Chapman Brown's 1931 book theorizing that all animal action is based on fulfilling the psychological needs of "feeling, emotion, and desire". The most notable component of this theory is that it predicted a person cannot learn to imitate until they are imitated.

In 1941, Neal E. Miller and John Dollard presented their book with a revision of Holt's social learning and imitation theory. They argued four factors contribute to learning: drives, cues, responses, and rewards. One driver is social motivation, which includes imitativeness, the process of matching an act to an appropriate cue of where and when to perform the act. A behavior is imitated depending on whether the model receives a positive or negative response consequences. Miller and Dollard argued that if one were motivated to learn a particular behavior, then that particular behavior would be learned through clear observations. By imitating these observed actions the individual observer would solidify that learned action and would be rewarded with positive reinforcement.

The proposition of social learning was expanded upon and theorized by Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura. Bandura, along with his students and colleagues conducted a series of studies, known as the Bobo doll experiment, in 1961 and 1963 to find out why and when children display aggressive behaviors. These studies demonstrated the value of modeling for acquiring novel behaviors. These studies helped Bandura publish his seminal article and book in 1977 that expanded on the idea of how behavior is acquired, and thus built from Miller and Dollard's research. In Bandura's 1977 article, he claimed that Social Learning Theory shows a direct correlation between a person's perceived self-efficacy and behavioral change. Self-efficacy comes from four sources: "performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states".

In 1986, Bandura published his second book, which expanded and renamed his original theory. He called the new theory social cognitive theory. Bandura changed the name to emphasize the major role cognition plays in encoding and performing behaviors. In this book, Bandura argued that human behavior is caused by personal, behavioral, and environmental influences.

In 2001, Bandura brought SCT to mass communication in his journal article that stated the theory could be used to analyze how "symbolic communication influences human thought, affect and action". The theory shows how new behavior diffuses through society by psychosocial factors governing acquisition and adoption of the behavior.

In 2011, Bandura published a book chapter -- The Social and Policy Impact of Social Cognitive Theory—to extend SCT'S application in health promotion and urgent global issues, which provides insight into addressing global problems through a macro social lens, aiming at improving equality of individuals' lives under the umbrellas of SCT.

SCT has been applied to many areas of human functioning such as career choice and organizational behavior as well as in understanding classroom motivation, learning, and achievement.

Current status

Social Cognitive Theory originated in psychology, but based on an unofficial November 2013 Google Scholar search, only 2 percent of articles published on SCT are in the pure psychology field. About 20 percent of articles are from Education and 16 percent from Business. The majority of publications using SCT, 56 percent, come from the field of Applied Health Psychology. The majority of current research in Health Psychology focuses on testing SCT in behavioral change campaigns as opposed to expanding on the theory. Campaign topics include: increasing fruit and vegetable intake, increasing physical activity, HIV education, and breastfeeding.

Born in 1925, Bandura is still influencing the world with expansions of SCT. His recent work, published May 2011, focuses on how SCT impacts areas of both health and population in relation to climate change. He proposes that these problems could be solved through television serial dramas that show models similar to viewers performing the desired behavior. On health, Bandura writes that currently there is little incentive for doctors to write prescriptions for healthy behavior, but he believes the cost of fixing health problems start to outweigh the benefits of being healthy. Bandura argues that we are on the cusp of moving from a disease model (focusing on people with problems) to a health model (focusing on people being healthy) and SCT is the theory that should be used to further a healthy society. Specifically on Population, Bandura states that population growth is a global crisis because of its correlation with depletion and degradation of our planet's resources. Bandura argues that SCT should be used to increase birth control use, reduce gender inequality through education, and to model environmental conservation to improve the state of the planet.

Overview

Social cognitive theory is a learning theory based on the idea that people learn by observing others. These learned behaviors can be central to one's personality. While social psychologists agree that the environment one grows up in contributes to behavior, the individual person (and therefore cognition) is just as important. People learn by observing others, with the environment, behavior, and cognition acting as primary factors that influence development in a reciprocal triadic relationship. Each behavior witnessed can change a person's way of thinking (cognition). Similarly, the environment one is raised in may influence later behaviors. For example, a caregiver's mindset (also cognition) determines the environment in which their children are raised.

The core concepts of this theory are explained by Bandura through a schematization of triadic reciprocal causation, The schema shows how the reproduction of an observed behavior is influenced by the interaction of the following three determinants:

1. Personal: Whether the individual has high or low self-efficacy toward the behavior (i.e. Get the learner to believe in his or her personal abilities to correctly complete a behavior);
2. Behavioral: The response an individual receives after they perform a behavior (i.e. Provide chances for the learner to experience successful learning as a result of performing the behavior correctly);
3. Environmental: Aspects of the environment or setting that influence the individual's ability to successfully complete a behavior (i.e. Make environmental conditions conducive for improved self-efficacy by providing appropriate support and materials).

It is important to note that learning can occur without a change in behavior. According to J.E. Ormrod's general principles of social learning, while a visible change in behavior is the most common proof of learning, it is not absolutely necessary. Social learning theorists believe that because people can learn through observation alone, their learning may not necessarily be shown in their performance. These are interdependent on each other and its influence can be directly linked with individual or group psychological behavior. According to Alex Stajkovic and Fred Luthans it is critically important to recognize that the relative influences exerted by one, two, or three interacting factors on motivated behavior will vary depending on different activities, different individuals and different circumstances.

Theoretical foundations

Human agency

Social cognitive theory is proposed in an agentic perspective, which suggests that, instead of being just shaped by environments or inner forces, individuals are self-developing, self-regulating, self-reflecting and proactive. Specifically, human agency operates within three modes:

• Individual Agency: A person’s own influence on the environment;
• Proxy Agency: Another person’s effort on securing the individual’s interests;
• Collective Agency: A group of people work together to achieve the common benefits.

Human agency has four core properties:

• Intentionality: Individuals’ active decision on engaging in certain activities;
• Forethought: Individuals’ ability to anticipate the outcome of certain actions;
• Self-reactiveness: Individuals’ ability to construct and regulate appropriate behaviors;
• Self-reflectiveness: Individuals’ ability to reflect and evaluate the soundness of their cognitions and behaviors.

Human capability

Evolving over time, human beings are featured with advanced neural systems, which enable individuals to acquire knowledge and skills by both direct and symbolic terms. Four primary capabilities are addressed as important foundations of social cognitive theory: symbolizing capability, self-regulation capability, self-reflective capability, and vicarious capability:

1. Symbolizing Capability: People are affected not only by direct experience but also indirect events. Instead of merely learning through laborious trial-and-error process, human beings are able to symbolically perceive events conveyed in messages, construct possible solutions, and evaluate the anticipated outcomes;
2. Self-regulation Capability: Individuals can regulate their own intentions and behaviors by themselves. Self-regulation lies on both negative and positive feedback systems, in which discrepancy reduction and discrepancy production are involved. That is, individuals proactively motivate and guide their actions by setting challenging goals and then making effort to fulfill them. In doing so, individuals gain skills, resources, self-efficacy and beyond;
3. Self-reflective Capability: Human beings can evaluate their thoughts and actions by themselves, which is identified as another distinct feature of human beings. By verifying the adequacy and soundness of their thoughts through enactive, various, social, or logical manner, individuals can generate new ideas, adjust their thoughts, and take actions accordingly;
4. Vicarious Capability: One critical ability human being featured is to adopt skills and knowledge from information communicated through a wide array of mediums. By vicariously observing others’ actions and its consequences, individuals can gain insights into their own activities. Vicarious capability is of great value to human beings’ cognitive development in nowadays, in which most of our information encountered in our lives derives from the mass media than trial-and-error process.

Theoretical components

Modeling

Social cognitive theory revolves around the process of knowledge acquisition or learning directly correlated to the observation of models. The models can be those of an interpersonal imitation or media sources. Effective modeling teaches general rules and strategies for dealing with different situations.

To illustrate that people learn from watching others, Albert Bandura and his colleagues constructed a series of experiments using a Bobo doll. In the first experiment, children were exposed to either an aggressive or non-aggressive model of either the same sex or opposite sex as the child. There was also a control group. The aggressive models played with the Bobo doll in an aggressive manner, while the non-aggressive models played with other toys. They found that children who were exposed to the aggressive models performed more aggressive actions toward the Bobo doll afterward, and that boys were more likely to do so than girls.

Following that study, Albert Bandura tested whether the same was true for models presented through media by constructing an experiment he called Bobo Doll Behavior: A Study of Aggression. In this experiment Bandura exposed a group of children to a video featuring violent and aggressive actions. After the video he then placed the children in a room with a Bobo doll to see how they behaved with it. Through this experiment, Bandura discovered that children who had watched the violent video subjected the dolls to more aggressive and violent behavior, while children not exposed to the video did not. This experiment displays the social cognitive theory because it depicts how people reenact behaviors they see in the media. In this case, the children in this experiment reenacted the model of violence they directly learned from the video.

Observations should include:

• Attention Observers selectively give attention to specific social behavior depending on accessibility, relevance, complexity, functional value of the behavior or some observer's personal attributes such as cognitive capability, value preference, preconceptions.
• Retention Observe a behavior and subsequent consequences, then convert that observation to a symbol that can be accessed for future reenactments of the behavior. Note: When a positive behavior is shown a positive reinforcement should follow, this parallel is similar for negative behavior;
• Production refers to the symbolic representation of the original behavior being translated into action through reproduction of the observed behavior in seemingly appropriate contexts. During reproduction of the behavior, a person receives feedback from others and can adjust their representation for future references;
• Motivational process reenacts a behavior depending on responses and consequences the observer receives when reenacting that behavior.

Modeling does not limit to only live demonstrations but also verbal and written behaviour can act as indirect forms of modeling. Modeling not only allows students to learn behaviour that they should repeat but also to inhibit certain behaviours. For instance, if a teacher glares at one student who is talking out of turn, other students may suppress this behavior to avoid a similar reaction. Teachers model both material objectives and underlying curriculum of virtuous living. Teachers should also be dedicated to the building of high self-efficacy levels in their students by recognizing their accomplishments.

Outcome expectancies

To learn a particular behavior, people must understand what the potential outcome is if they repeat that behavior. The observer does not expect the actual rewards or punishments incurred by the model, but anticipates similar outcomes when imitating the behavior (called outcome expectancies), which is why modeling impacts cognition and behavior. These expectancies are heavily influenced by the environment that the observer grows up in; for example, the expected consequences for a DUI in the United States of America are a fine, with possible jail time, whereas the same charge in another country might lead to the infliction of the death penalty.

For example, in the case of a student, the instructions the teacher provides help students see what outcome a particular behaviour leads to. It is the duty of the teacher to teach a student that when a behaviour is successfully learned, the outcomes are meaningful and valuable to the students.

Self-efficacy

Social cognitive theory posits that learning most likely occurs if there is a close identification between the observer and the model and if the observer also has a good deal of self-efficacy. Self–efficacy is the extent to which an individual believes that they can master a particular skill. Self-efficacy beliefs function as an important set of proximal determinants of human motivation, affect, and action—which operate on action through motivational, cognitive, and affective intervening processes.

According to Bandura, self-efficacy is "the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations". Bandura and other researchers have found an individual's self-efficacy plays a major role in how goals, tasks, and challenges are approached. Individuals with high self-efficacy are more likely to believe they can master challenging problems and they can recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments. Individuals with low self-efficacy tend to be less confident and don't believe they can perform well, which leads them to avoid challenging tasks. Therefore, self-efficacy plays a central role in behavior performance. Observers who have high level of self-efficacy are more likely to adopt observational learning behaviors.
Self-efficacy can be developed or increased by:

• Mastery experience, which is a process that helps an individual achieve simple tasks that lead to more complex objectives;
• Social modeling provides an identifiable model that shows the processes that accomplish a behavior;
• Improving physical and emotional states refers to ensuring a person is rested and relaxed prior to attempting a new behavior. The less relaxed, the less patient, the more likely they won't attain the goal behavior;
• Verbal persuasion is providing encouragement for a person to complete a task or achieve a certain behavior.

For example, students become more effortful, active, pay attention, highly motivated and better learners when they perceive that they have mastered a particular task. It is the duty of the teacher to allow student to perceive in their efficacy by providing feedback to understand their level of proficiency. Teachers should ensure that the students have the knowledge and strategies they need to complete the tasks.

Self-efficacy has also been used to predict behavior in various health related situations such as weight loss, quitting smoking, and recovery from heart attack. In relation to exercise science, self-efficacy has produced some of the most consistent results revealing an increase in participation in exercise.

Identification

Identification allows the observer to feel a one-to-one similarity with the model, and can thus lead to a higher chance of the observer following through with the modeled action. People are more likely to follow behaviors modeled by someone with whom they can identify with. The more commonalities or emotional attachments perceived between the observer and the model, the more likely the observer learns and reenact the modeled behavior.

Applications

Mass communication

Media contents studies

Social cognitive theory is often applied as a theoretical framework of studies pertained to media representation regarding race, gender, age and beyond. Social cognitive theory suggested heavily repeated images presented in mass media can be potentially processed and encoded by the viewers (Bandura, 2011). Media content analytic studies examine the substratum of media messages that viewers are exposed to, which could provide an opportunity to uncover the social values attached to these media representations. Although media contents studies cannot directly test the cognitive process, findings can offer an avenue to predict potential media effects from modeling certain contents, which provides evidence and guidelines for designing subsequent empirical work.

Media effects studies

Social cognitive theory is pervasively employed in studies examining attitude or behavior changes triggered by the mass media. As Bandura suggested, people can learn how to perform behaviors through media modeling. SCT has been widely applied in media studies pertained to sports, health, education and beyond. For instance, Hardin and Greer in 2009 examined the gender-typing of sports within the theoretical framework of social cognitive theory, suggesting that sports media consumption and gender-role socialization significantly related with gender perception of sports in American college students.

In health communication, social cognitive theory has been applied in research related to smoking quit, HIV prevention, safe sex behaviors, and so on. For example, Martino, Collins, Kanouse, Elliott, and Berry in 2005 examined the relationship between the exposure to television’s sexual content and adolescents’ sexual behavior through the lens of social cognitive theory, confirming the significant relationship between the two variables among white and African American groups; however, no significant correlation was found between the two variables in the ethic group of Hispanics, indicating that peer norm could possibly serve as a mediator of the two examined variables.

Public health

Miller's 2005 study found that choosing the proper gender, age, and ethnicity for models ensured the success of an AIDS campaign to inner city teenagers. This occurred because participants could identify with a recognizable peer, have a greater sense of self-efficacy, and then imitate the actions to learn the proper preventions and actions. A study by Azza Ahmed in 2009 looked to see if there would be an increase in breastfeeding by mothers of preterm infants when exposed to a breastfeeding educational program guided by SCT. Sixty mothers were randomly assigned to either participate in the program or they were given routine care. The program consisted of SCT strategies that touched on all three SCT determinants: personal – showing models performing breastfeeding correctly to improve self-efficacy, behavioral –weekly check-ins for three months reinforced participants' skills, environmental – mothers were given an observational checklist to make sure they successfully completed the behavior. The author found that mothers exposed to the program showed significant improvement in their breastfeeding skills, were more likely to exclusively breastfeed, and had fewer problems then the mothers who were not exposed to the educational program.

Morality

Social cognitive theory emphasizes a large difference between an individual's ability to be morally competent and morally performing. Moral competence involves having the ability to perform a moral behavior, whereas moral performance indicates actually following one's idea of moral behavior in a specific situation. Moral competencies include:

• what an individual is capable of;
• what an individual knows;
• what an individual's skills are;
• an individual's awareness of moral rules and regulations;
• an individual's cognitive ability to construct behaviors.

As far as an individual's development is concerned, moral competence is the growth of cognitive-sensory processes; simply put, being aware of what is considered right and wrong. By comparison, moral performance is influenced by the possible rewards and incentives to act a certain way. For example, a person's moral competence might tell them that stealing is wrong and frowned upon by society; however, if the reward for stealing is a substantial sum, their moral performance might indicate a different line of thought. Therein lies the core of social cognitive theory.

For the most part, social cognitive theory remains the same for various cultures. Since the concepts of moral behavior did not vary much between cultures (as crimes like murder, theft, and unwarranted violence are illegal in virtually every society), there is not much room for people to have different views on what is morally right or wrong. The main reason that social cognitive theory applies to all nations is because it does not say what is moral and immoral; it simply states that we can acknowledge these two concepts. Our actions in real-life scenarios are based on whether we believe the action is moral and whether the reward for violating our morals is significant enough, and nothing else.

Limitations

Modelling and mass media

In series TV programming, according to social cognitive theory, the awarded behaviors of liked characters are supposed to be followed by viewers, while punished behaviors are supposed to be avoided by media consumers. However, in most cases, protagonists in TV shows are less likely to experience the long-term suffering and negative consequences caused by their risky behaviors, which could potentially undermine the punishments conveyed by the media, leading to a modeling of the risky behaviors. Nabi and Clark conducted experiments about individual’s attitudes and intentions consuming various portrayals of one-night stand sex– unsafe and risky sexual behavior, finding that individuals who had not previously experience one night stand sex, consuming media portrayals of this behavior could significantly increase their expectations of having an one night stand sex in the future, although negative outcomes were represented in TV shows.

Information culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Information culture

Information culture is closely linked with Information Technology, Information Systems and the digital world. It is difficult to give one definition of Information Culture and many approaches exist.

Overview

The literature regarding Information Culture focuses on the relationship between individuals and information in their work. Curry and Moore are most frequently cited in the Information Culture literature, and there is consensus of that values accorded to information, and attitudes towards it are indicators of Information Culture (McMillan et al., 2012; Curry and Moore, 2003; Furness, 2010; Oliver, 2007; Davenport and Prusak, 1997; Widén-Wulff, 2000; Jarvenpaa and Staples, 2001). Information Culture is a culture that is conducive to effective information management where "the value and utility of information in achieving operational and strategic goals is recognized, where information forms the basis of organizational decision making and Information Technology is readily exploited as an enabler for effective information systems". Information Culture is a part of the whole Organizational culture. It is only by understanding the organisation that progress can be made with information management activities.

Ginman defines Information Culture as the culture in which the transformation of intellectual resources is maintained alongside the transformation of material resources. Information Culture is the environment where knowledge is produced with social intelligence, social interaction and work knowledge. Multinational organizations (MNOs) are characterized by their engagement in global markets (Umanath & Campbell, 1994). In order to remain competitive in today’s global marketplace.

In many organizations Information Culture is described as a form of Information Technology. As Davenport writes, many executives think they solve all information problems with buying IT-equipment. Information Culture is about effective information management to use information, not machines, and Information Technology is just a part of Information Culture, which has an interactive role in it.

Information Culture is the part of organizational culture where evaluation and attitudes towards information depend on the situation in which the organization works. In an organization everyone has different attitudes, but the information profile must be explained, so the importance of information should be realized by executives. The Information Culture is also about formal information systems (technology), common knowledge, individual information systems (attitudes), and information ethics. Information Culture does not include written or conscious behavior and what seemingly happening in the organization. Information Culture is affected by the behaviors of internal factors of organization more than external factors, which comes in form of Information Culture, the attitudes and the traditions. Information Culture deals with information, information channels, the attitudes, the use and ability to forward or gather information with the environmental circumstances effectively. Knowledge base of any organization can be viewed according to Nonaka’s theories about the organizational knowledge production and Cronin & Davenport's theories about the social intelligence. According to these theories it is important to look at the organization Information Culture how the user uses the information. Cultural differences need to be understood before information technology developed for an organization in one country can be effectively implemented in an organization in another country.

A highly developed Information Culture leads the organization to success and work as a strategic goal that positively associated with organizational practices and performance. Choo et al. looked at Information Culture as the socially shared patterns of behaviors, norms and values that define the significance and use of information in an organization. Also, scholars like Manuel Castells posits that the Information Culture transcends the confines of organizations and government participation through policies is relevant for achieving the norms and values. Norms are standards and values are beliefs and together they mold the information behavior as normal that are expected by the people in organization. In so far, information behavior is the reflection of cultural norms and values. Marchand, Kettinger and Rollins identifies six information behaviors and values to profile an organization's Information Culture:

• Information integrity is defined as the use of information in a trustful and principled manner.
• Information formality is the willingness to use and trust formal information over informal sources;
• Information control is the extent to which information is used to manage and monitor performance;
• Information transparency is the openness in reporting on errors and failures;
• Information sharing is the willingness to provide others with information;
• Proactiveness is actively using new information to innovate and respond quickly to changes.

Information Culture typologies

Based on a widely applied construct from Cameron and Quinn that has been used to differentiate organizational culture types and their relationships to organizational effectiveness, Choo develops a typology of Information Culture. He emphasizes elements from information behavior research. The Information Culture typologies are characterized by a set of five attributes:

1. the primary goal of information management;
2. information values and norms;
3. information behaviors in terms of information needs;
4. information seeking;
5. information use.

In addition, Choo classifies Information Culture into four categories: Relationship-based Culture, Risk-taking Culture, Result-oriented Culture, and Rule-following Culture.

Relationship-based Culture: information management supports communication, participation, and a sense of identity. Information values and norms emphasize sharing and the proactive use of information. These values promote collaboration and cooperation. The focus is on internal information.

Risk-taking Culture: innovation, creativity, and the exploration of new ideas are encouraged while information is managed. Information values and norms emphasize sharing and the proactive use of information. These values promote innovation, development of new products or capabilities, and the boldness to take the initiative. The focus is on external information. Information is used to identify and evaluate opportunities, and promote entrepreneurial risk-taking.

Result-oriented Culture: information management enables the organization to compete and succeed in its market or sector. Information values and norms call attention to control and integrity: accurate information is valued in order to assess performance and goal attainment. Information is used to understand clients and competitors, and to evaluate results.

Rule-following Culture: information management reinforces the control of internal operations, rules and policies. Information values and norms emphasize control and standardized processes. The focus is on internal information. The organization seeks information about workflows, as well as information about regulatory or accountability requirements. Information is used to control operations, improve efficiency, and provide accountability.

Information Culture in government organization

Information governance is beginning to gain traction within organizations, particularly where compliance is a concern, and Davenport and Prusak’s models of governance are useful tools to inform the design of information governance. Most public sector organizations in Canada have informal information governance models (or policies) Davenport, Eccles and Prusak have developed four models of information governance, to inform a progression of control. They describe the levels of information governance using political terms: information federalism, information feudalism, information monarchy, and information anarchy. Their observations allow to evaluate the effectiveness of their governance models in terms of information quality, efficiency, commonality, and access.

Oliver’s  research on three case study organizations found several factors that characterized and differentiated the Information Cultures were associated with the organizational information management framework, as well as attitudes and values accorded to information. Compliance requirements for the management of information have a significant place in shaping Information Culture.

Research suggests that poor compliance to formal information governance policies reinforces the fact that sound knowledge and records management practices are often neglected.

Information Culture affects support, enthusiasm and cooperation of staff and management of information, asserts Curry and Moore. If such an Information Culture is critical to the successful management of information assets, then it becomes vital to develop and nurture the commitment from both management and staff at all levels. Curry and Moore have developed an exploratory model of Information Culture, which included components needed within a strong Information Culture: effective communication flows, cross-organizational partnerships, co-operative working practices and open access to relevant information, management of information systems in accordance with business strategy, and clear guidelines and documentation for information and data management. Trust is a characteristic that has more recently come to the forefront in literature. The social dynamics between supervisors and workers relies upon trust, or the lack of trust, which will also have an effect on information sharing.

Information Culture and Information Use

Curry and Moore define Information Culture as "a culture in which the value and utility of information in achieving operational and strategic success is recognised, where information forms the basis of organizational decision making and information technology is readily exploited as an enabler for effective information systems". Information Culture is manifested in the organization’s values, norms, and practices that affect how information is perceived, created and used. The six information behaviors and values identified by Marchand to characterize the Information Culture of an organization are information integrity, formality, control, sharing, transparency, and proactiveness. A part of culture that deals specifically with information —the perceptions, values, and norms that people have about creating, sharing, and applying information— has a significant effect on information use outcomes. It is possible to systematically identify behaviors and values that describe an organization’s Information Culture. It is possible to systematically identify behaviours and values that characterize an organization’s Information Culture, and that this characterization could be helpful in understanding the information use effectiveness of all sorts of organizations, including private businesses, government agencies, and publicly funded institutions such as libraries and museums. A study by Choo and others suggested that organizations might do well to remember that in the rush to implement strategies and systems, information values and information culture will always have a defining influence on how people share and use information.

Information Culture and Organizational Culture

In industrialised countries, most of the diseases and injuries are related to mental health problems and are the main reason of employees absenteeism. There are number of risk factors or stressors that may cause psychological strain and ill health, resulted in occupational stress interventions that occur in isolation, independent of organizational culture. Paying more attention to organizational culture paves the way for a contextualized analysis of stress and distress in the workplace. An integrated framework is used in which the association between organizational culture and mental health is mediated by the work organization conditions that qualify the task environment like information management, information sharing and decision making. Organizational cultures somehow intertwined with the Information Culture. Information Culture is a part of Organizational Culture as values, behaviour of employees in the organisation somehow effect the Information Culture. The framework links organizational culture to mental health via work organization conditions and is inscribed within the functionalist perspective that views culture as an organizational construct that influences and shapes organizational characteristics. Organizational culture is conceptualized in terms of the four quadrants of the Quinn and Rohrbaugh typology. Which are Group Culture, Developmental Culture, Hierarchical Culture and Rational Culture and by knowing these cultures organisations can easily adopt the relevant culture according to their work related conditions. Although work organization conditions and organizational culture are closely intertwined, they should not be confounded (Detert, Schroeder, & Mauriel; Schein; Witte & Muijen, 1999). Just as societal cultural values would influence organizationally relevant outcomes (Taras, Kirkman, & Steel, 2010), organizational culture might influence work organization conditions. Schein views organizational culture as a multilayered construct that includes artifacts, values, social ideals, and basic assumptions. Artifacts such as behaviors, structures, processes, and technology form a first layer. At a more latent level, organizational culture is noticed in the values and social ideals shared by members of the organization (i.e., ideology of the organization). These values and ideals are revealed in symbolic mechanisms such as myths, rituals, stories, legends, and a codified language, as well as in corporate objectives, strategies, management philosophies, and in the justifications given for these.

Group Culture encourages employees to make suggestions regarding how to improve their own work and overall performance. As a result, the group culture creates an empowering environment in which individuals perceive they have autonomy and influence. Consequently, in the Group Culture, individuals recognize that their work has meaning and that they have the skills to carry it out. Considering also that information sharing is an important feature of employee participation, informational support from leaders is likely to be high in the group culture. Group Culture tends to develop task designs that promote the use of skills and decision authority, which are protective factors and also implement work organization conditions that promote social support whether from colleagues or from supervisors, which thereby have a beneficial influence on employee mental health.

Developmental Culture is helpful to develop decentralised work design that promotes the use of skills and decision authority with benefit to employee mental health. In Developmental Culture, employees are likely to enjoy significant rewards that could have beneficial effects on employee mental health.

Hierarchical Culture is helpful to promote social support and thereby play a beneficial role in employee mental health. In this type of culture, it could well be seniority that determines both compensation and career advancement, giving employees a certain level of job security that could prove beneficial for employee mental health.

Rational Culture with clear performance indicators and measurements is likely to minimize conflicting demands that could be beneficial for employee mental health.So these integrated model can help the organisations and the managers to choose the suitable culture. Integration of organizational culture into occupational stress models is a fruitful avenue to achieve a deeper understanding of occupational mental health problems in the workplace and this framework can also helpful to serve as a starting point for multilevel occupational stress research.

HKU study finds that ocean circulation in the North Atlantic is at its weakest since the past 1,500 years

Public Release: 23-Nov-2018 by The University of Hong Kong

Original link:  https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/tuoh-oci112318.php?fbclid=IwAR0yqMSxxrse1df16kHXvFqCnzwePaJX_N92N1v6Ke28uZ_dxRLmN1_FN2g 

IMAGE: This is a schematic of the circulation in the western North Atlantic during episode of strong (left) and weak (right) westward transport of the Labrador Current (LC). The oceanography of... view more 

Credit: @The University of Hong Kong

The research co-led by Drs. Christelle Not and Benoit Thibodeau from the Department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, The University of Hong Kong, highlights a dramatic weakening of the circulation during the 20th century that is interpreted to be a direct consequence of global warming and associated melt of the Greenland Ice-Sheet. This is important for near-future climate as slower circulation in the North Atlantic can yield profound change on both the North American and European climate but also on the African and Asian summer monsoon rainfall.

The findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is the branch of the North Atlantic circulation that brings warm surface water toward the Arctic and cold deep water toward the equator.
This transfer of heat and energy not only has direct influence on climate over Europe and North American but can impact the African and Asian monsoon system through its effect on sea surface temperature, hydrological cycle, atmospheric circulation and variation in the intertropical convergence zone. Many climate models predicted a weakening, or even a collapse of this branch of the circulation under global warming, partly due to the release of freshwater from Greenland Ice-Sheet. This freshwater has lower density than salty water and thus prevents the formation of deep water, slowing down the whole circulation. However, this weakening is still vigorously debated because of the scarcity of long-term record of the AMOC. Drs. Not and Thibodeau used microfossils, called foraminifer, found in a sediment core to estimate the past temperature of the Ocean. The sediment core used is located in the Laurentian Channel, on the coast of Canada, where two important currents meet. Thus, the strength of these currents will control the temperature of the water at the coring site which implies that the temperature reconstructed from this core is indicative of the strength of the North Atlantic circulation. With their collaborators from the United-States of America, they validated their results using instrumental data and two numerical models that can simulate the climate and the ocean.

"The AMOC plays a crucial role in regulating global climate, but scientists are struggling to find reliable indicators of its intensity in the past. The discovery of this new record of AMOC will enhance our understanding of its drivers and ultimately help us better comprehend potential near-future change under global warming" said Dr. Thibodeau.

Interestingly, the research team also found a weak signal during a period called the Little Ice Age (a cold spell observed between about 1600 and 1850 AD). While not as pronounced as the 20th century trend, the signal might confirm that this period was also characterized by a weaker circulation in the North Atlantic, which implies a decrease in the transfer of heat toward Europe, contributing to the cold temperature of this period. However, more work is needed to validate this hypothesis.

"While we could ground-truth our temperature reconstruction for the 20th century against instrumental measurement it is not possible to do so for the Little Ice Age period. Therefore, we need to conduct more analysis to consolidate this hypothesis" said Dr. Not.

###

About the journal paper

"Last century warming over the Canadian Atlantic shelves linked to weak Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation", Geophysical Research Letters.

About the research team

Drs Not and Thibodeau are leading the Environmental Geochemistry and Oceanography research group at The University of Hong Kong and are member of the department of Earth Sciences and the Swire Institute of Marine Science.

For media enquiries, please contact Ms Cindy Chan, Senior Communication Manager of HKU Faculty of Science (tel: 3917 5286/6703 0212; email: cindycst@hku.hk) or Dr. Thibodeau.

Image download: http://www.scifac.hku.hk/news/media?page=1

Information society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An information society is a society where the creation, distribution, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. Its main drivers are digital information and communication technologies, which have resulted in an information explosion and are profoundly changing all aspects of social organization, including the economy, education, health, warfare, government and democracy. The people who have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes called digital citizens, defined by K. Mossberger as “Those who use the Internet regularly and effectively”. This is one of many dozen labels that have been identified to suggest that humans are entering a new phase of society.

 

The markers of this rapid change may be technological, economic, occupational, spatial, cultural, or some combination of all of these. Information society is seen as the successor to industrial society. Closely related concepts are the post-industrial society (Daniel Bell), post-fordism, post-modern society, knowledge society, telematic society, Information Revolution, liquid modernity, and network society (Manuel Castells).

Definition

There is currently no universally accepted concept of what exactly can be termed information society and what shall rather not so be termed. Most theoreticians agree that a transformation can be seen that started somewhere between the 1970s and today and is changing the way societies work fundamentally. Information technology goes beyond the internet, and there are discussions about how big the influence of specific media or specific modes of production really is. Frank Webster notes five major types of information that can be used to define information society: technological, economic, occupational, spatial and cultural. According to Webster, the character of information has transformed the way that we live today. How we conduct ourselves centers around theoretical knowledge and information.

Kasiwulaya and Gomo (Makerere University) allude that information societies are those that have intensified their use of IT for economic, social, cultural and political transformation. In 2005, governments reaffirmed their dedication to the foundations of the Information Society in the Tunis Commitment and outlined the basis for implementation and follow-up in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. In particular, the Tunis Agenda addresses the issues of financing of ICTs for development and Internet governance that could not be resolved in the first phase.

Some people, such as Antonio Negri, characterize the information society as one in which people do immaterial labour. By this, they appear to refer to the production of knowledge or cultural artifacts. One problem with this model is that it ignores the material and essentially industrial basis of the society. However it does point to a problem for workers, namely how many creative people does this society need to function? For example, it may be that you only need a few star performers, rather than a plethora of non-celebrities, as the work of those performers can be easily distributed, forcing all secondary players to the bottom of the market. It is now common for publishers to promote only their best selling authors and to try to avoid the rest—even if they still sell steadily. Films are becoming more and more judged, in terms of distribution, by their first weekend's performance, in many cases cutting out opportunity for word-of-mouth development.

Michael Buckland characterizes information in society in his book Information and Society. Buckland expresses the idea that information can be interpreted differently from person to person based on that individual's experiences.

Considering that metaphors and technologies of information move forward in a reciprocal relationship, we can describe some societies (especially the Japanese society) as an information society because we think of it as such.

The word information may be interpreted in many different ways. According to Buckland in Information and Society, most of the meanings fall into three categories of human knowledge: information as knowledge, information as a process, and information as a thing.

The growth of information in society

Internet users per 100 inhabitants Source: International Telecommunications Union.

 

 

The amount of data stored globally has increased greatly since the 1980s, and by 2007, 94% of it was stored digitally. Source

The growth of technologically mediated information has been quantified in different ways, including society's technological capacity to store information, to communicate information, and to compute information. It is estimated that, the world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986, which is the informational equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007. This is the informational equivalent of 60 CD-ROM per person in 2007 and represents a sustained annual growth rate of some 25%. The world’s combined technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was the informational equivalent of 174 newspapers per person per day in 2007.

The world's combined effective capacity to exchange information through two-way telecommunication networks was 281 petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986, 471 petabytes in 1993, 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000, and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, which is the informational equivalent of 6 newspapers per person per day in 2007. The world's technological capacity to compute information with humanly guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10^8 MIPS in 1986, to 6.4 x 10^12 MIPS in 2007, experiencing the fastest growth rate of over 60% per year during the last two decades.

James R. Beniger describes the necessity of information in modern society in the following way: “The need for sharply increased control that resulted from the industrialization of material processes through application of inanimate sources of energy probably accounts for the rapid development of automatic feedback technology in the early industrial period (1740-1830)” (p. 174) “Even with enhanced feedback control, industry could not have developed without the enhanced means to process matter and energy, not only as inputs of the raw materials of production but also as outputs distributed to final consumption.”(p. 175)

Development of the information society model

Colin Clark's sector model of an economy undergoing technological change. In later stages, the Quaternary sector of the economy grows.

One of the first people to develop the concept of the information society was the economist Fritz Machlup. In 1933, Fritz Machlup began studying the effect of patents on research. His work culminated in the study The production and distribution of knowledge in the United States in 1962. This book was widely regarded and was eventually translated into Russian and Japanese. The Japanese have also studied the information society (or jōhōka shakai, 情報化社会).

The issue of technologies and their role in contemporary society have been discussed in the scientific literature using a range of labels and concepts. This section introduces some of them. Ideas of a knowledge or information economy, post-industrial society, postmodern society, network society, the information revolution, informational capitalism, network capitalism, and the like, have been debated over the last several decades.

Fritz Machlup (1962) introduced the concept of the knowledge industry. He began studying the effects of patents on research before distinguishing five sectors of the knowledge sector: education, research and development, mass media, information technologies, information services. Based on this categorization he calculated that in 1959 29% per cent of the GNP in the USA had been produced in knowledge industries.

Economic transition

Peter Drucker has argued that there is a transition from an economy based on material goods to one based on knowledge. Marc Porat distinguishes a primary (information goods and services that are directly used in the production, distribution or processing of information) and a secondary sector (information services produced for internal consumption by government and non-information firms) of the information economy.

Porat uses the total value added by the primary and secondary information sector to the GNP as an indicator for the information economy. The OECD has employed Porat's definition for calculating the share of the information economy in the total economy (e.g. OECD 1981, 1986). Based on such indicators, the information society has been defined as a society where more than half of the GNP is produced and more than half of the employees are active in the information economy.

For Daniel Bell the number of employees producing services and information is an indicator for the informational character of a society. "A post-industrial society is based on services. (…) What counts is not raw muscle power, or energy, but information. (…) A post industrial society is one in which the majority of those employed are not involved in the production of tangible goods".

Alain Touraine already spoke in 1971 of the post-industrial society. "The passage to postindustrial society takes place when investment results in the production of symbolic goods that modify values, needs, representations, far more than in the production of material goods or even of 'services'. Industrial society had transformed the means of production: post-industrial society changes the ends of production, that is, culture. (…) The decisive point here is that in postindustrial society all of the economic system is the object of intervention of society upon itself. That is why we can call it the programmed society, because this phrase captures its capacity to create models of management, production, organization, distribution, and consumption, so that such a society appears, at all its functional levels, as the product of an action exercised by the society itself, and not as the outcome of natural laws or cultural specificities" (Touraine 1988: 104). In the programmed society also the area of cultural reproduction including aspects such as information, consumption, health, research, education would be industrialized. That modern society is increasing its capacity to act upon itself means for Touraine that society is reinvesting ever larger parts of production and so produces and transforms itself. This makes Touraine's concept substantially different from that of Daniel Bell who focused on the capacity to process and generate information for efficient society functioning.
Jean-François Lyotard has argued that "knowledge has become the principle [sic] force of production over the last few decades". Knowledge would be transformed into a commodity. Lyotard says that postindustrial society makes knowledge accessible to the layman because knowledge and information technologies would diffuse into society and break up Grand Narratives of centralized structures and groups. Lyotard denotes these changing circumstances as postmodern condition or postmodern society.

Similarly to Bell, Peter Otto and Philipp Sonntag (1985) say that an information society is a society where the majority of employees work in information jobs, i.e. they have to deal more with information, signals, symbols, and images than with energy and matter. Radovan Richta (1977) argues that society has been transformed into a scientific civilization based on services, education, and creative activities. This transformation would be the result of a scientific-technological transformation based on technological progress and the increasing importance of computer technology. Science and technology would become immediate forces of production (Aristovnik 2014: 55).

Nico Stehr (1994, 2002a, b) says that in the knowledge society a majority of jobs involves working with knowledge. "Contemporary society may be described as a knowledge society based on the extensive penetration of all its spheres of life and institutions by scientific and technological knowledge" (Stehr 2002b: 18). For Stehr, knowledge is a capacity for social action. Science would become an immediate productive force, knowledge would no longer be primarily embodied in machines, but already appropriated nature that represents knowledge would be rearranged according to certain designs and programs (Ibid.: 41-46). For Stehr, the economy of a knowledge society is largely driven not by material inputs, but by symbolic or knowledge-based inputs (Ibid.: 67), there would be a large number of professions that involve working with knowledge, and a declining number of jobs that demand low cognitive skills as well as in manufacturing (Stehr 2002a).

Also Alvin Toffler argues that knowledge is the central resource in the economy of the information society: "In a Third Wave economy, the central resource – a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values – is actionable knowledge" (Dyson/Gilder/Keyworth/Toffler 1994).

At the end of the twentieth century, the concept of the network society gained importance in information society theory. For Manuel Castells, network logic is besides information, pervasiveness, flexibility, and convergence a central feature of the information technology paradigm (2000a: 69ff). "One of the key features of informational society is the networking logic of its basic structure, which explains the use of the concept of 'network society'" (Castells 2000: 21). "As an historical trend, dominant functions and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized around networks. Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies, and the diffusion of networking logic substantially modifies the operation and outcomes in processes of production, experience, power, and culture" (Castells 2000: 500). For Castells the network society is the result of informationalism, a new technological paradigm.

Jan Van Dijk (2006) defines the network society as a "social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels (individual, group/organizational and societal). Increasingly, these networks link all units or parts of this formation (individuals, groups and organizations)" (Van Dijk 2006: 20). For Van Dijk networks have become the nervous system of society, whereas Castells links the concept of the network society to capitalist transformation, Van Dijk sees it as the logical result of the increasing widening and thickening of networks in nature and society. Darin Barney uses the term for characterizing societies that exhibit two fundamental characteristics: "The first is the presence in those societies of sophisticated – almost exclusively digital – technologies of networked communication and information management/distribution, technologies which form the basic infrastructure mediating an increasing array of social, political and economic practices. (…) The second, arguably more intriguing, characteristic of network societies is the reproduction and institutionalization throughout (and between) those societies of networks as the basic form of human organization and relationship across a wide range of social, political and economic configurations and associations".

Critiques

The major critique of concepts such as information society, knowledge society, network society, postmodern society, postindustrial society, etc. that has mainly been voiced by critical scholars is that they create the impression that we have entered a completely new type of society. "If there is just more information then it is hard to understand why anyone should suggest that we have before us something radically new" (Webster 2002a: 259). Critics such as Frank Webster argue that these approaches stress discontinuity, as if contemporary society had nothing in common with society as it was 100 or 150 years ago. Such assumptions would have ideological character because they would fit with the view that we can do nothing about change and have to adopt to existing political realities (kasiwulaya 2002b: 267).

These critics argue that contemporary society first of all is still a capitalist society oriented towards accumulating economic, political, and cultural capital. They acknowledge that information society theories stress some important new qualities of society (notably globalization and informatization), but charge that they fail to show that these are attributes of overall capitalist structures. Critics such as Webster insist on the continuities that characterise change. In this way Webster distinguishes between different epochs of capitalism: laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century, corporate capitalism in the 20th century, and informational capitalism for the 21st century (kasiwulaya 2006).

For describing contemporary society based on a dialectic of the old and the new, continuity and discontinuity, other critical scholars have suggested several terms like:

• transnational network capitalism, transnational informational capitalism (Christian Fuchs 2008, 2007): "Computer networks are the technological foundation that has allowed the emergence of global network capitalism, that is, regimes of accumulation, regulation, and discipline that are helping to increasingly base the accumulation of economic, political, and cultural capital on transnational network organizations that make use of cyberspace and other new technologies for global coordination and communication. [...] The need to find new strategies for executing corporate and political domination has resulted in a restructuration of capitalism that is characterized by the emergence of transnational, networked spaces in the economic, political, and cultural system and has been mediated by cyberspace as a tool of global coordination and communication. Economic, political, and cultural space have been restructured; they have become more fluid and dynamic, have enlarged their borders to a transnational scale, and handle the inclusion and exclusion of nodes in flexible ways. These networks are complex due to the high number of nodes (individuals, enterprises, teams, political actors, etc.) that can be involved and the high speed at which a high number of resources is produced and transported within them. But global network capitalism is based on structural inequalities; it is made up of segmented spaces in which central hubs (transnational corporations, certain political actors, regions, countries, Western lifestyles, and worldviews) centralize the production, control, and flows of economic, political, and cultural capital (property, power, definition capacities). This segmentation is an expression of the overall competitive character of contemporary society." (Fuchs 2008: 110+119);
• digital capitalism (Schiller 2000, cf. also Peter Glotz): "networks are directly generalizing the social and cultural range of the capitalist economy as never before" (Schiller 2000: xiv);
• virtual capitalism: the "combination of marketing and the new information technology will enable certain firms to obtain higher profit margins and larger market shares, and will thereby promote greater concentration and centralization of capital" (Dawson/John Bellamy Foster 1998: 63sq);
• high-tech capitalism or informatic capitalism (Fitzpatrick 2002) – to focus on the computer as a guiding technology that has transformed the productive forces of capitalism and has enabled a globalized economy.

Other scholars prefer to speak of information capitalism (Morris-Suzuki 1997) or informational capitalism (Manuel Castells 2000, Christian Fuchs 2005, Schmiede 2006a, b). Manuel Castells sees informationalism as a new technological paradigm (he speaks of a mode of development) characterized by "information generation, processing, and transmission" that have become "the fundamental sources of productivity and power" (Castells 2000: 21). The "most decisive historical factor accelerating, channelling and shaping the information technology paradigm, and inducing its associated social forms, was/is the process of capitalist restructuring undertaken since the 1980s, so that the new techno-economic system can be adequately characterized as informational capitalism" (Castells 2000: 18). Castells has added to theories of the information society the idea that in contemporary society dominant functions and processes are increasingly organized around networks that constitute the new social morphology of society (Castells 2000: 500). Nicholas Garnham is critical of Castells and argues that the latter’s account is technologically determinist because Castells points out that his approach is based on a dialectic of technology and society in which technology embodies society and society uses technology (Castells 2000: 5sqq). But Castells also makes clear that the rise of a new "mode of development" is shaped by capitalist production, i.e. by society, which implies that technology isn't the only driving force of society.

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argue that contemporary society is an Empire that is characterized by a singular global logic of capitalist domination that is based on immaterial labour. With the concept of immaterial labour Negri and Hardt introduce ideas of information society discourse into their Marxist account of contemporary capitalism. Immaterial labour would be labour "that creates immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response" (Hardt/Negri 2005: 108; cf. also 2000: 280-303), or services, cultural products, knowledge (Hardt/Negri 2000: 290). There would be two forms: intellectual labour that produces ideas, symbols, codes, texts, linguistic figures, images, etc.; and affective labour that produces and manipulates affects such as a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, passion, joy, sadness, etc. (Ibid.).

Overall, neo-Marxist accounts of the information society have in common that they stress that knowledge, information technologies, and computer networks have played a role in the restructuration and globalization of capitalism and the emergence of a flexible regime of accumulation (David Harvey 1989). They warn that new technologies are embedded into societal antagonisms that cause structural unemployment, rising poverty, social exclusion, the deregulation of the welfare state and of labour rights, the lowering of wages, welfare, etc.

Concepts such as knowledge society, information society, network society, informational capitalism, postindustrial society, transnational network capitalism, postmodern society, etc. show that there is a vivid discussion in contemporary sociology on the character of contemporary society and the role that technologies, information, communication, and co-operation play in it. Information society theory discusses the role of information and information technology in society, the question which key concepts shall be used for characterizing contemporary society, and how to define such concepts. It has become a specific branch of contemporary sociology.

Second and third nature

Information society is the means of getting information from one place to another. As technology has advanced so too has the way people have adapted in sharing this information with each other.
"Second nature" refers a group of experiences that get made over by culture. They then get remade into something else that can then take on a new meaning. As a society we transform this process so it becomes something natural to us, i.e. second nature. So, by following a particular pattern created by culture we are able to recognise how we use and move information in different ways. From sharing information via different time zones (such as talking online) to information ending up in a different location (sending a letter overseas) this has all become a habitual process that we as a society take for granted.

However, through the process of sharing information vectors have enabled us to spread information even further. Through the use of these vectors information is able to move and then separate from the initial things that enabled them to move. From here, something called "third nature" has developed. An extension of second nature, third nature is in control of second nature. It expands on what second nature is limited by. It has the ability to mould information in new and different ways. So, third nature is able to ‘speed up, proliferate, divide, mutate, and beam in on us from else where. It aims to create a balance between the boundaries of space and time (see second nature). This can be seen through the telegraph, it was the first successful technology that could send and receive information faster than a human being could move an object. As a result different vectors of people have the ability to not only shape culture but create new possibilities that will ultimately shape society.

Therefore, through the use of second nature and third nature society is able to use and explore new vectors of possibility where information can be moulded to create new forms of interaction.

Sociological uses

In sociology, informational society refers to a post-modern type of society. Theoreticians like Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells argue that since the 1970s a transformation from industrial society to informational society has happened on a global scale.

As steam power was the technology standing behind industrial society, so information technology is seen as the catalyst for the changes in work organisation, societal structure and politics occurring in the late 20th century.

In the book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler used the phrase super-industrial society to describe this type of society. Other writers and thinkers have used terms like "post-industrial society" and "post-modern industrial society" with a similar meaning.

Related terms

A number of terms in current use emphasize related but different aspects of the emerging global economic order. The Information Society intends to be the most encompassing in that an economy is a subset of a society. The Information Age is somewhat limiting, in that it refers to a 30-year period between the widespread use of computers and the knowledge economy, rather than an emerging economic order. The knowledge era is about the nature of the content, not the socioeconomic processes by which it will be traded. The computer revolution, and knowledge revolution refer to specific revolutionary transitions, rather than the end state towards which we are evolving. The Information Revolution relates with the well known terms agricultural revolution and industrial revolution:

• The information economy and the knowledge economy emphasize the content or intellectual property that is being traded through an information market or knowledge market, respectively. Electronic commerce and electronic business emphasize the nature of transactions and running a business, respectively, using the Internet and World-Wide Web. The digital economy focuses on trading bits in cyberspace rather than atoms in physical space. The network economy stresses that businesses will work collectively in webs or as part of business ecosystems rather than as stand-alone units. Social networking refers to the process of collaboration on massive, global scales. The internet economy focuses on the nature of markets that are enabled by the Internet;
• Knowledge services and knowledge value put content into an economic context. Knowledge services integrates Knowledge management, within a Knowledge organization, that trades in a Knowledge market. In order for individuals to receive more knowledge, surveillance is used. This relates to the use of Drones as a tool in order to gather knowledge on other individuals. Although seemingly synonymous, each term conveys more than nuances or slightly different views of the same thing. Each term represents one attribute of the likely nature of economic activity in the emerging post-industrial society. Alternatively, the new economic order will incorporate all of the above plus other attributes that have not yet fully emerged;
• In connection with the development of the information society, appeared information pollution, evolving information ecology - associated with information hygiene.

Today, It is important to selectively select the information. Due to information revolution, the amount of information is puzzling. Among these, we need to develop techniques that refine information. This is called data mining. It is an engineering term, but it is used in sociology. In other words, if the amount of information was competitive in the past, the quality of information is important today.

Intellectual property considerations

One of the central paradoxes of the information society is that it makes information easily reproducible, leading to a variety of freedom/control problems relating to intellectual property. Essentially, business and capital, whose place becomes that of producing and selling information and knowledge, seems to require control over this new resource so that it can effectively be managed and sold as the basis of the information economy. However, such control can prove to be both technically and socially problematic. Technically because copy protection is often easily circumvented and socially rejected because the users and citizens of the information society can prove to be unwilling to accept such absolute commodification of the facts and information that compose their environment.

Responses to this concern range from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States (and similar legislation elsewhere) which make copy protection (see DRM) circumvention illegal, to the free software, open source and copyleft movements, which seek to encourage and disseminate the "freedom" of various information products (traditionally both as in "gratis" or free of cost, and liberty, as in freedom to use, explore and share).

Caveat: Information society is often used by politicians meaning something like "we all do internet now"; the sociological term information society (or informational society) has some deeper implications about change of societal structure. Because we lack political control of intellectual property, we are lacking in a concrete map of issues, an analysis of costs and benefits, and functioning political groups that are unified by common interests representing different opinions of this diverse situation that are prominent in the information society.

Digital transformation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation (DX) is not necessarily about digital technology, but about the fact that technology, which is digital, allows people to solve their traditional problems. And they prefer this digital solution to the old solution.

The transformation stage means that digital usages inherently enable new types of innovation and creativity in a particular domain, rather than simply enhance and support traditional methods.

In a narrower sense, "digital transformation" may refer to the concept of "going paperless" or reaching a "digital business maturity" affecting both individual businesses and whole segments of society, such as government, mass communications, art, medicine, and science.

While the impact of this on businesses has been profound, many are struggling to realise the full potential of what digitisation and this is also clearly divided by Geography. According to the McKinsey Global Institute's Industry Digitization Index, Europe is currently operating at 12% of its digital potential, while the USA is operating at 18%. Even within the leading economies of Europe there are also some significant differences as, according to the study, Germany operates at 10% of its digital potential, while the UK is almost on par with the US at 17%. This clearly demonstrates that, while business processes are undergoing great change making much progress in the adoption of digitisation, even advanced economies are struggling to exploit the full potential of digitisation.

Layers of Digital Transformation for organizational considerations

Historic development

Binary

In 1703 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz explained and envisioned the concept that would be known as "digitalization" in his publication Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire. Initially developed as a base-2 numerical system, using only two values, 0 and 1, the system was further developed and complemented by scholars such as George Boole (1854), Claude Shannon (1938)^, and George Stibitz during the 1940s.

Early digital computers

Today, Stibitz is considered one of many pioneers of the digital computer, through the development of the first electromechanical computer from his discovery of the automatic computing relays as well as the term 'digital'. The first electronic computer was introduced by John Atanasoff in 1939. The process of digitalization thereafter accelerated, with the development of personal computers such as the Simon in 1950, Apple II in 1977 and IBM PC in 1981.

Accelerated change

With the introduction of the World Wide Web, the scope, dimension, scale, speed as well as effects of digitalization fundamentally changed, resulting in the increased pressure on the societal transformation process.

In 2000, digitalization began to be used more widely as a concept and argument for an overall governmental introduction of IT, increased usage of internet and IT on all levels. A similar development began in the general business climate in order to raise awareness regarding the issue and opportunity. In the EU for instance, an initiative called the Digital Single Market was developed, with recommendations for national digital agendas in the EU, which gradually and positively should contribute to the future societal transformation, with more modern development of communities, structures and to create a basis for e-governance and information society.

Impact

The debate surrounding digitalization has therefore gained increased practical importance for politics, business and social issues, and is linked to political work issues for community development, new changes in the practical business approaches, effective opportunities for organizations in operational and business process development, with effect on internal and external efficiency of IT to name a few. The digital transformation is slated to generate over $370 billion in global value during the next four years.

Development

Digitization is a sub-process of a much larger technological progress (see below): digitization (the conversion), digitalization (the process) and the digital transformation (the effect) that are collectively accelerating the global and societal transformation process.

Digitization

In political, business, trade, industry and media discourses, digitization is defined as "the conversion of analog information into digital form" (i.e. numeric, binary format). Digitizing is technically explained as the representation of signals, images, sounds and objects by generating a series of numbers, expressed as a discrete value. The majority of sectors and industries in media, banking and finance, telecoms, medtech and health care have been strongly affected by this conversion of information.

Digitalization

Unlike digitization, digitalization is the actual 'process' of the technologically-induced change within these industries. This process has enabled much of the phenomena today known as the Internet of Things, Industrial Internet, Industry 4.0, Big data, machine to machine communication, blockchain, cryptocurrencies etc.

The academic discussion surrounding digitalization has been described as problematic as no clear definition of the phenomena has been previously developed. A common misconception is that digitalization essentially means the usage of more IT, in order to enable and take advantage of digital technology and data. This early definition however, has largely been replaced by the above definition, now linked to holistic views on business and social change, horizontal organizational and business development, as well as IT.

Digital transformation

Finally, digital transformation is described as "the total and overall societal effect of digitalization". Digitization has enabled the process of digitalization, which resulted in stronger opportunities to transform and change existing business models, consumption patterns, socio-economic structures, legal and policy measures, organizational patterns, cultural barriers, etc.

Digitization (the conversion), digitalization (the process) and the digital transformation (the effect) therefore accelerate and illuminate the already existing and ongoing horizontal and global processes of change in society.

Opportunities and challenges

Digital transformation is a major challenge and opportunity. When planning for digital transformation, organizations must factor the cultural changes they'll confront as workers and organizational leaders adjust to adopting and relying on unfamiliar technologies. Digital transformation has created unique marketplace challenges and opportunities, as organizations must contend with nimble competitors who take advantage of the low barrier to entry that technology provides. Additionally, due to the high importance given today to technology and the widespread use of it, the implications of digitization for revenues, profits and opportunities have a dramatic upside potential. We can understand digital transformation through some real-world examples.

1. Digital transformation in hospitality management

It focuses on ambitious digital transformation, aiming to put the customer back at the center of its strategy and operations. We need to assess organizational structure to embrace digital transformation and identify how data from online content and reviews might play a role in increasing booking. Latest advancement in this respect are Online Travel Agencies, service aggregators like Expedia, Booking.com. We have another competitor in market which is not only digitally transforming the hospitality industry but actually bringing disruption with the help of technology, AirBnb.

2. Digital Transformation in e-commerce

Digital experience has become inevitable without e-commerce interaction. Big players like Amazon.com, Alibaba.com have already disrupted the shopping journey. But now we have more challenging tasks of avoiding sequence of events that lead to the security breaches like theft of debit and credit card numbers as well as the personal information of millions of customers. We need to improve over our infrastructure with minute details like safe transactional operations, improved customer satisfaction along with data security.

3. Digital Transformation in banking

It focuses on digital transformation of banking sector in seeking regional growth amidst a new digital era. Banks have already invested heavily in technology and infrastructure, which bring dramatic changes and rewired this sector for digital innovation. From online banking (bank in your pocket), to ATM availability at every nook and corner has enriched the user experience. Major forces of the digital transformation strategy involve the overhaul of organization, the rapid enhancements of highly scalable digital platforms, the leverage on technology to sculpt the customer experience, and the internal evolution and external partnering in seeking new digital innovation.

4. Digital Transformation in training

With the increase of online learning tools and facilities organisations and individuals are looking for more flexible ways per personal development. Using video driven lectures, online learning communities and learning management systems allows creating new business models which disrupt the traditional lecture driven training sessions.

5. Digital transformation in healthcare

It concentrates on the application of IT-reliant services for facilitating the management and delivery of health services. It involves storage and exchange of clinical data (e.g. electronic medical records, electronic health records), inter-professional communication (e.g. secure e-mail and direct messaging), computer-based support (e.g. clinical decision support systems, computerized physician order entry), patient-provider interaction and service delivery (e.g. patient referral and handover systems), and education. Most studies implicitly report on cases from primary care (e.g. family doctors, medical specialists), secondary care (e.g. hospitals, clinics), or medical research facilities. However, digital transformation in healthcare also takes place in areas other than clinics and research facilities, like for example community-based health promotion and outpatient care services.

Other studies

In November 2011, a three-year study conducted by the MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting concluded that only one-third of companies globally have an effective digital transformation program in place.

The study defined an "effective digital transformation program" as one that addressed:

• "The What": the intensity of digital initiatives within a corporation;
• "The How": the ability of a company to master transformational change to deliver business results.

A report published in 2013 by Booz & Company warns that the impact of digitization "is not uniform". This points out that some sectors and countries have taken to digitization more readily than others. It concludes that "policymakers need to develop digitization plans across sectors that take into consideration the varying impact by level of economic development and sector".

In 2015, the World Economic Forum and Accenture launched the digital transformation initiative (DTI) to study and research the impact of digitalization. The initiative offers unique insights into the impact of digital technologies on business and wider society over the next decade. DTI research supports collaboration between the public and private sectors focused on ensuring that digitalization unlocks new levels of prosperity for both industry and society. A 2017 interim report claims that digital transformation "could deliver $ 100 trillion in value to business and society over the next decade".

A 2015 report by MIT Center for Digital Business and Deloitte found that "maturing digital businesses are focused on integrating digital technologies, such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud, in the service of transforming how their businesses work. Less-mature digital businesses are focused on solving discrete business problems with individual digital technologies."

In February 2017, a study by McKinsey & Company argued that "On average, industries are less than 40 percent digitized, despite the relatively deep penetration of these technologies in media, retail, and high tech". This study also points out the inequality in the penetration of digital change across industries, arguing that while in some industries there were core changes due to digitization, in others the impact of this phenomenon was limited to minor or secondary changes.

In July 2017, a survey of 1239 global IT and business professionals was released by the digital performance management company Dynatrace. While this study shows, that 48% of its participants "stated digital performance challenges were directly hindering the success of digital transformation strategies in their companies", the survey also refers to 75% of respondents, "who had low levels of confidence in their ability to resolve digital performance problems".

In October 2017 a survey of 890 CIOs and IT Directors across 23 countries by Logicalis Group established that 44% of respondents felt complex legacy technology is the chief barrier to digital transformation, with 51% saying they planned to adapt or replace existing infrastructure as a means of accelerating digital transformation.