Holistic information behavior and the perceived success of work in organizations

Surprisingly little is known about the relationship between perceived work success and information behavior. This study shows that holistic (versus organization-centric) information behavioral preferences are related to interaction and exchange oriented perceptions of the success of work. The findings were drawn from a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) based analysis of the survey data (N = 305) collected from employees of a large multinational corporation. The findings suggest that holistic information behavior is more strongly related to social measures of success, whereas their association with quantitative measures tends to be lower. From the perspective of information behavior research, the findings suggest that holism seems to be a similar factor to, for instance, task complexity or personality, which influences human information behavior and, for instance, perceptions of relevance. From a practical perspective, the study suggests that the promotion of specific facets of measuring success and patterns of information behavior can be used to influence the orientation of working between centrifugality and openness.