More Than an Answer: Information Relationships for Actionable Knowledge

TLDR

Research on information processing, managerial cognition, and social networks shows that people rely on others for information, yet the link between seeking information and generating actionable knowledge for short‑term projects remains unclear. The study investigates how personal information sources contribute to actionable knowledge. The authors use qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the role of personal information sources in generating actionable knowledge. The study identified five components of actionable knowledge—solutions, referrals, problem reformulation, validation, and legitimation—and found that both source and seeker expertise, as well as relationship features, predict their receipt, offering implications for social capital and organizational learning.

Abstract

Research on information processing, managerial cognition, and social networks demonstrates that people rely on other people for information. However, this work has not specified how seeking information from others results in actionable knowledge—knowledge directed at making progress on relatively short-term projects. This research employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate how personal sources of information contribute to actionable knowledge. Our qualitative study found that people cultivate different kinds of information relationships that are the source of 5 components of actionable knowledge: (1) solutions (both know-what and know-how), (2) referrals (pointers to other people or databases), (3) problem reformulation, (4) validation, and (5) legitimation. Our quantitative study revealed that, while source expertise predicted receipt of these components of actionable knowledge, so too did expertise of the seeker and features of the relationship between the seeker and source. We draw implications from these findings for the study of social capital and organizational learning.