The new emphasis on use has had impact in particular on the prevalent focus on economic information. When attention shifts from “T” to “I,” serious questioning begins with regard to what type of information is of greatest value. This is not always dollars and cents, though this is some of the easiest information for information technologists to collect:[xix]
“Top executives have not used the new technology because it has not provided the information they need for their own tasks. The data available to business enterprise are, for instance, still largely based on the early-19th-century theorem that lower costs differentiate businesses and make them compete successfully. MIS has taken the data based on this theorem and computerized them. They are the data of the traditional accounting system. . . . But as we began to realize around the time of World War II, neither preservation of assets nor cost control is a top management task. . . . A serious cost disadvantage may indeed destroy a business. But business success is based on something totally different, the creation of value and wealth. This requires risk-taking decisions: on the theory of the business, on business strategy, on abandoning the old and innovating the new, on the balance between immediate profitability and market share. . . . [F]or none of these top management tasks does the traditional accounting system provide information. Indeed, none of these tasks is even compatible with the assumptions of the traditional accounting model.”
We are seeing much greater attention being directed in recent years to softer data regarding not just productivity but also morale, not just equipment costs but also opportunity costs, not just income but also reputation and image. New branches of the organization’s Management Information System (MIS) are now being created—including Human Resource Banks.[xx]
This redirection of attention from fiscal to nonfiscal information and from “hard” to “soft” data is described by Drucker: [xxi]
“Information technologies, especially chief information officers in businesses, soon realized that the accounting data are not what their associates need—which largely explains why MIS and IT people tend to be contemptuous of accounting and accountants. But they did not, as a rule, realize that what was needed was not more data, more technology, more speed. What was needed was to define information; what was needed was new concepts.”
These new concepts require information, but this information is not contained on many spreadsheets. Much of this information comes from outside the organization (market trends, shifting governmental policy, shifting customer needs, deregulations, economic trends and so forth). Information from inside the organization concerns primarily the conditions for productivity and, in particular, the conditions for creativity and innovation. The new knowledge worker, in particular, can’t be captured in a financial statement. This worker must be understood in quite different terms. It is to these new workers that we now turn.
