Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

‘information’ is a verb and means the specific process of interaction between organisms that allows
them to jointly use their sensors and memories, thus increasing their chances for survival.
And that is great. Now a usable experience of any member, imprinted in his picture of the world or
‘mental map’ can be enhanced many times by the experience of other members of the community,
if they are successful in communication.
This multiplier process of exchanging information in an organization may create a common
information field or organizational mental map, and its size is larger than any particular individual
map, which is limited by the content of only one memory.
‘Information’ does not exist in nature as a certain substance. It is impossible to say whether a
signal (taken as it is) carries any information or not. It depends not only on the signal, but on the
result of the interaction between two mental maps. If none of these maps has been changed – then
no information took place. The “signal” was merely noise.
Quantity of information
The result of an information process may be estimated by the amount of uncertainty that was taken
away. The uncertainty depends, in its turn, on a variety of possible situations, which should be
distinguished as different. ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – it is only one bit. ‘To be’ or ‘not to be’ – is also only one
bit. But the label on a bottle of good old wine means a lot for those who understand.
The quantity of uncertainty that may be taken away by one signal is up to the informational
capacity of the signal. It depends on how many signals exist in the applied system of coding, and
what is the probability of the appearance of each particular signal. The greater the variety of
situations represented by the given range of signals the more uncertainty. No uncertainty is related
to situations that always and definitely take place. The less probable a situation (and the
appearance of its corresponding signals), the more uncertainty will be taken away when the signal
comes.
However, the amount of ‘information‘ that a signal may carry (informational capacity) may not be
the same as the amount actually transferred. The barrel may be big, but empty. It all depends if the
information process took place, which is not always the case when just sending and receiving
signals takes place. Consider reading an old newspaper without any real ‘news’ in it, or listening to
a lecturer who says nothing but speaks for an hour, or a philharmonic orchestra that uses the huge
informational potential of combined signals from hundreds of instruments – and does not produce
any relevant feelings.
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