By increasing self-awareness and teaching knowledge concepts, the perception of information pathologies can be sharpened.
Information pathology is a collective term in industrial psychology for various aspects that can fail in the generation, exchange and application of information, with the consequence that decisions are made on the basis of an inadequate information base.
Information pathologies are avoidable errors in knowledge production and communication. Individual phenomena such as groupthink, information overload or self serving bias are closely related to information pathologies and have been studied within the framework of general psychology and social psychology.
The concept of information pathologies basically states that information can be wrongly present, wrongly transmitted and/or wrongly encoded.
This
term goes back to Harold L.
Wilensky:
Organizational Intelligence:
Knowledge and Policy in Government
and Industry. By Harold L. Wilensky.
New York: Basic Books, 1967.
https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/46/4/549/2228569?login=false
Information pathologies further
limit bounded rationality.
The
starting point of all considerations
on the decision-making behaviour of
individuals is the concept of
bounded rationality (Simon, 1976).
Cognitive limits to information
intake and processing prevent the
individual from making objectively
rational decisions. People strive to
act in an intentionally rational
manner, as evidenced by the pursuit
of the so-called ideal of
rationality. The focus on facts and
figures may push differently
interpretable contexts of an issue
into the background. Wilensky
assumed that the main cause of
information pathologies was rooted
in the ideal of rationality.
An extensive empirical study was able to show that the use of power is a major cause of information pathologies (Scholl, 1999). The use of power has a negative effect on knowledge growth.
And people
tend to be influenced by their
unconscious desires, needs and
conflicts in everyday life. But
power precisely consists in
controlling the acquisition,
possession and application of
information.
https://scilogs.spektrum.de/psychologie-des-alltags/informationspathologien/
Scholl, W. (2004): "Innovation und
Information. Wie in Unternehmen neues
Wissen produziert wird.", Göttingen:
Hogrefe.
Kieser, A. (2006, 6th
edition): "Organisationstheorien",
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
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By increasing self-awareness and teaching knowledge concepts, the perception of information pathologies can be sharpened.
Several information pathologies can reinforce each other in their effect. Empirical evidence has shown that innovation success is almost impossible when information pathologies become entrenched. Therefore, it is important to address information pathologies at different levels...
The distinction
between the four types:
Decision-relevant information that
- can be produced and is not produced
- is available, but is not transmitted correctly
- can be procured, but is not procured
- applicable, but not applied
