Abstract
M.Com. (Business Management)
Current situation deems information is a fundamental and vital asset in any organisation, especially in the decision making process as it allows business decision makers to analyse feasible alternatives based on opportunities and threats as well as reduce uncertainty. Studies indicate some managers lack the necessary skills when assessing the quality, authority, trustworthiness, relevance, and currency of information. This research explored how information fluency, as a post information literacy skill, aids the decision making capabilities of senior managers. The research objective was to develop an information fluency framework for business decision making in the fourth industrial age.
Literature describes on the forefront of the fourth industrial age, information literacy is now more than ever an integral part in the application of quality information. It is the age of digital information abundance, fraught with uncharted and unfamiliar territories and filled with questions and challenges. The fourth industrial age is potentially creating a threat to humankind; humans seem to be becoming less capable of processing or making sense of the vast amounts of information in this age of digital information. The digital age requires more than just traditional critical thinking skills. It requires humans to advance to a higher level of information fluency with the ability to evaluate all assumptions and to understand fully the new technologies and the information environment within it as well as the biases found in information per se.
Research methodology was an exploratory qualitative study with a deductive research approach to assess senior managers’ information literacy proficiency based on a theoretical framework and deduced their proficiency levels and ability to be information fluent. The research design was multi-method, consisting of an interactive interview with memos (reflective note taking) combined with observation for data collection. The non-probability, homogenous purposive sampling technique was applied. Twelve participants were selected for this research based on their roles as senior managers from the main Johannesburg Stock Exchange sectors. All interviews were transcribed, coded, and categorised according to the thematic categories identified in the theoretical framework.
Key findings revealed that exposure or non-exposure to information literacy do not have significant impact on senior managers’ ability to search and evaluate information. Results show that the application of basic information literacy skills is an intuitive activity mainly based on their experience framework and is self-taught; information must not be confined and defined through its conduit, but rather by its context, and intermediate information literacy skills such as critical thinking is applied unconsciously...