Information management is a well-established yet ill-defined management sub discipline. This chapter defines and explores information management through the development of a generic framework. This framework investigates and interrelates the different components of information management. Developed as a re-interpretation of and as an extension to the widely propagated model for strategic management, it deals with the interrelationship of business, information, and decision making at the strategic management, structural, and operations level. The framework and its government maxims place us in position to fundamentally reconsider information management.
TopInformation as a key resource for the development of organizations emerged in the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century; the act of reducing the role of the U.S. in 1977 led to the recognition that the production of information for competitive public procurement had a high cost, the same applying to the storage and information security at the level of each federal state.
At business level, information also began to be seen as a resource that has value to the business and the costs for their acquisition, storage, handling and use, shall be known and that organizational budgets should recognize those costs.
The emergence of management information and its consequences for research were significant: the economics of information, i.e. the information as an economic good that had been an insignificant part of the economy reaches a new importance. So far, the economy had underestimated the importance of information in their models of the perfect market, where they considered information as perfect.
Finally, the information policy and strategic information became key terms in the research and the need for policies and strategies at national, local and organizational was recognized. Four decades have passed since the emergence of information management as a field of research. During this period it was developed by scholars and professionals worldwide. In addition, there was a change in the handling of information and information technologies and communication.
Empirical research in the areas of economics, management, and organization theory, information systems for management, library and information sciences served as a basis for theoretical development in these fields. All of this had a significant influence on the work and research of information management.
In the last decade there were many changes and it was developed so much knowledge that has been accumulated especially by academia. The aim of our work is to disseminate the change in the research of information management during the past decade (1989 to 2000) and contribute to its development in the field of business sciences. The work consists of the overview of discussions on information management and information management research.