Information behaviour in a scientific-technical environment: A survey with innovation engineers

Abstract

A small written survey with innovation engineers in a large company is discussed, giving some figures on both behaviour and attitudes with respect to 1) information gathering, 2) information production/dissemination and 3) information storage and management. Most results confirm the trends in other research with R & D engineers: the use and management of information is rather improvised with low levels of sophistication. High tech information techniques (databases, online...) are only marginally important in this high-tech environment. Only younger engineers do some structured efforts. The general attitude is to rely mostly on oral, personal and occasional information sources. By combining positive attitudes and behaviour aspects towards information in the job, a measure of ‘information-orientation’ was constructed, which can be seen as an extension of the classical concept of ‘gate-keepers’ in a company. A few questions to reconstruct a ‘critical incident’ with respect to information problems reveal that information situations can be very time- and money-consuming but again solutions depend on occasional and unstructured information work. However the restricted written approach did not prove to be a good one for this kind of analysis. More in-depth interview-techniques will be necessary for analysis within the ‘critical incident theory’-frame.