A Sound of Silence: Organizational Behavior and Enterprise Information Management

Abstract

In 2017, I introduced a new theoretical framework in Archival Science, that of the ‘Archive–as–Is’. This framework proposes a theoretical foundation for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) in World 2.0, the virtual, interactive, and hyper connected platform that is developing around us. This framework should allow EIM to end the existing ‘information chaos’, to computerize information management, to improve the organizational ability to reach business objectives, and to define business strategies. The concepts of records and archives are crucial for those endeavors. The framework of the ‘Archive–as–Is’ is an organization–oriented archival theory, consisting of five components, namely: four dimensions of information, two archival principles, five requirements of information accessibility, the information value chain; and organizational behavior. In this paper, the subject of research is component 5 of the framework: organizational behavior. Behavior of employees (including archivists) is one of the most complicated aspects within organizations when creating, processing, managing, and preserving information, records, and archives. There is an almost universal ‘sound of silence’ in scholarly literature from archival and information studies although this subject and its effects on information management are studied extensively in many other disciplines, like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and organization science. In this paper, I want to study how and why employees behave as they do when they are working with records and archives and how EIM is influenced by this behavior.

Keywords: Enterprise Information Management, Archives, Records, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Climate, Organizational Culture

JEL Classification: D23, D83, M15