Critical Thinking in Research and Analysis

The Importance Of Information

The subject of information is the topic for Chapter 2; however, it is impossible to discuss the need for critical thinking and analysis without having the context of the information being evaluated. Today any organisation has to deal with a great deal of information and an even more significant amount of data. In many instances, the terms data and information are used interchangeably, which can confuse the issue when determining which information is strategically useful. It is hard to decide what information is required to plan the organisation's strategic development and, equally as necessary, the accuracy and reliability of the information obtained from outside the organisation.

The vast amount of data that information systems can generate, much of which can be interesting, can misdirect and overwhelm the user. The fundamental key information elements are overlooked. It is essential to have a planned framework of the required information before beginning the search. It is also desirable to know how the necessary information is to be catalogued and stored. As new information is gathered, it must be able to be easily related to the accumulating story describing the business situation.

The term ‘information’ is examined, together with the need for a critical review of new information before it is added to the knowledge base. Techniques are examined on how to perform critical analysis to search out better value information. There is, of course, internal information about the company and information about its performance and external information about where the company sits within the market and in comparison with its competitors. Much of the internal information can be classed as originating from hard data from the company's internal operation. There will be some soft data concerning the judgements about strengths and weaknesses, what the value to the customer is, and where the value to the organization can be found. However, the external data must all be considered soft data unless it can be validated and confirmed in some way.

Alter (2002) defines information as: “information is data whose form and content are appropriate for a particular use”. Another way to put this is that information can be used immediately without further manipulation by the recipient to take action or make a decision. This is a handy definition because it also considers that what is useful information at one level of the organization may only be background data at a more senior level of the organization. The implication of this definition means that the research team must precisely know the purpose of the information they gather. Although this definition of information is acceptable for the hard data resulting from information systems, it does not go far enough when considering the soft data of opinions and subjective evaluations of competitors and customers that have to be taken into account for business development.

The hard transaction data must be evaluated critically for relevance to the strategic task, and the soft internal data must be reviewed to ensure it is free from bias. The soft external data must be corroborated for accuracy, timeliness, and relevance and associated with relevant internal data and knowledge. The appropriate research methodology (quantitative or qualitative) needs to apply to the form of data. All linkages between information elements, dependencies, stress points and threshold limits need to be identified. All this information is required to build an architectural blueprint of the current status and functioning of the organisation, which can then be used to enable its position in the marketplace to be realistically determined.

The new information needs to be analysed for its relative position within the overall information structure and recorded along with any assumptions and motivations into the developing knowledge base of the organisation's competitive position. As the development team research the organisation's business environment, they need to be mindful of the need for critical analysis. They need to be able to provide informed reasoning backed by evidence and ideas from a trustworthy source, identify context, background, and any bias that may lead to distortion, and identify and question unfounded assumptions. This knowledge base must be appropriately structured to present the holistic picture of the organisation and its competitive environment. This picture will help the development team draw inferences and conclusions for changes to create a competitive advantage for the organization.