ABSTRACT
The business, and increasingly the government agency as well, will be knowledge-based, and composed largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through organized feedback from colleagues and customers. It will be an information-based organization. Large organizations will have little choice but to become information-based. An information-based organization can be built without advanced data-processing technology. Information-based organizations need central operating work such as legal counsel, public relations, human resources, and labour relations, as much as ever. Perhaps the best example of a large and successful information-based organization, and one without any middle management at all, was the British civil service in India. Information responsibility to others is increasingly understood, especially in middle-sized companies. But information responsibility to oneself is still largely neglected. Everyone in the information-based organization needs however constantly to be thinking through what information he or she needs to do the job and to make a contribution.
