Healthcare Services Mangers’ Decision-Making and Information
This paper presents research results that provide insights into how information influences healthcare managers’ decisions. Information needs included explicit Organizational Knowledge (such as policies and guidelines), Cultural Organizational Knowledge (situational such as buy-in, controversy, bias, conflict of interest; and environmental such as politics and power), and Tacit Organizational Knowledge (gained experientially and through intuition). Managers tended to use internal information (already created or implemented within an organization) when investigating an issue and developing strategies. When selecting a strategy, managers either actively looked for additional external information–or else they didn’t, and simply made a decision without all of the information that they would have liked to have. Managers may be more likely to use external information (ie, research-based library resources) if their own internal information is well-managed. The article’s authors suggest that librarians may have a role in managing information created within an organization in order to integrate it with externally created information resources.
