The Knowing Organization is the first text that links the broad areas of organizational behavior and information management. It looks at how organizations behave as information-seeking, information-creating, and information-using communities, and offers models of how organizations behave and how information participates in that behavior. Choo pursues three main objectives throughout the text. First, he analyzes and compares the principal modes by which an organization uses information strategically to make sense of its changing environment, create knowledge, and make decisions. Second, he examines the structure and dynamics of how information is sought and used in each of these modes: sensemaking through the development of shared meanings; knowledge creation through the conversion and sharing of different forms of organizational knowledge; and decision making through the use of rules and routines that reduce complexity and uncertainty. Lastly, the author proposes a new framework of the knowing organization in which sensemaking, knowledge-creating, and decision-making are linked as a continuum of nested activities that invigorates an organization with the information and knowledge to act intelligently. Knowing how to manage information effectively within the organization is key to the success of the modern firm, a failure of which can cause a breakdown of organizational purpose. The Knowing Organization is essential for students of organizational behavior and information management courses, and serves equally well as a guide for researchers studying organizations and information use.

Chun Wei Choo's profile page

Chun Wei Choo is at University of Toronto.

"His [Choo's] definition of the 'knowing organization' contributes to our conception of the firm as a dynamic organization competing in an ever-changing world, and highlights the fact that an organization competes through its knowledge assets." --Dorothy Leonard, Harvard University

"I know my students will love reading this text because it addresses many issues we discuss in class: knowledge creation, constructing meaning, decision-making, and nested information activities. There is great interest in the areas about which he is writing." -- Cal W. Downs, School of Business, Kansas University

"A very readable and informative compendium and synthesis of the large array of contributions that have been made to the management and development of knowledge within organizations. A must for the knowing manager."--Russell L. Ackoff, Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of the Management Sciences, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

"This text integrates two great interests of management scholars. The subject is organized well, in fact, it is quite creative." -- Timothy Peterson, College of Business Administration, University of Tulsa

A fluent, persuasive, elegant writer, Choo convinces us that to survive and prosper, an understanding of how people use information in organizations is fundamental....I see the book as a text to be used in graduate courses dealing with organizational theory, information management, knowledge management, information use, and systems design. -- Ethel Auster, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto

"Professor Choo has taken on an enormous challenge of integrating research in organizational theory and information science in order to understand how organizations can become better information processing systems. Working from this perspective as a Professor of Information Studies, Choo integrates apparently divergent points of view from the literature on meaning construction and sense-making, knowledge creation and building, and decision making. His purpose is to propose a framework of the 'knowing' organization. The strength of his work lies in the breadth of research he has covered in each of these domains." --Dorothy Leonard, Harvard University