Osemeke Mosindi
Organizations as complex social networks: Understanding information sharing behaviour
Nationality: Nigerian
Year of entry: 2008
Status: Full-time
Research area: Information behaviour
Research group: Information Management Innovation (IMI)
Research topic: Organizations as complex social networks: Understanding information sharing behaviour
Research supervisors: Dr Petia Sice; Dr Julie Horton; Dr Alison Pickard
Background and Experience:
2008- Northumbria University (PhD programme member)
2007-08 BSc (Hons) Applied Computing, Northumbria University
2004-07 NIIT Software Training Institute, Nigeria
Research description:
My study is about understanding how individuals behave when they approach and handle information in organizations. In particular this study looks at proactive information sharing behaviour of individuals and the factors that influence such behaviour.
This research was a result of an actual problem in a manufacturing organization where I have worked for almost 2 years in the IT department, I aimed to look at the reasons for poor information sharing in the organization, mainly focusing on IT systems and re-engineering business processes. I later gained more understanding of the problems and conceptualized them as relating to the information behaviour and complexity of human interactions in the organization. Focusing mainly on the social factors, the study looks to build a model of information sharing behaviour of proactive individuals in organizations, taking into account the cognitive and environmental factors.
The research is carried out using a mixed methods approach, which comprises several data collection methods; observations, documents, social network analysis and semi structured interviews. The study is mainly interpretivist and uses two case studies; one is a medium sized engineering company that manufactures safety equipment, and the other is a public library in a populous city, both information intensive organisations.
Publications:
Mosindi, O., Sice, P., (2011) ‘Social network analysis and information systems in organisations: Highlighting the need to understand information sharing behaviour’, UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS). St Catherine’s College, Oxford 11 April 2011. (Accepted)
Mosindi, O., Sice, P., (2011) ‘An exploratory theoretical framework for understanding information behaviour’, special issue of the journal of technology and human interaction, April 2011.
Mosindi, O., Sice, P., (2010) ‘Towards Complementarity between Systems Approaches and Social Network Analysis’, UK systems society conference (UKSS), September 2010, Oxford UK.
Mosindi, O. (2010) ‘Organisations as complex social networks: Understanding Information behaviour’, St Catherine’s College, Oxford 11 March 2010. UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS).
Mosindi, O. (2009) Poster at the Vitae Yorkshire and North East Hub Poster Competition and Networking Event "Communicating to the Public", Leeds UK, April 22 2009.
