Introducing Fundamental Concepts and Strategic Perspective

Abstract

This chapter introduces the fundamental assumption and argument of the informing view of organization (IVO) that informing agents are central to understanding organizations. Informing agents are information technologies (IT), data, knowledge, wisdom, and information conceptualized as the meaning resulting from processing data by knowledge. This informing process assists in resolving uncertainty but only partially since it is bound to a spiral of uncertainty. The discussion furthermore addresses the topic of big data in relation to understanding today's customer in a more comprehensive way. Next, the strategic perspective is introduced, and several important theories of strategy are explained and compared. Moreover, a full model of IVO is introduced, and each of its aspects are explained. The chapter closes by elaborating on the interdisciplinary background of IVO and its theoretical and practical goals.