Senior managers’ information behavior in current emerging ubiquitous and intelligent computing environment

Emerging ubiquitous and intelligent information systems, such as the Internet, social computing technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), have facilitated the increasing complexity and dynamism of operational and strategic information in a highly distributed environment. As a result, organizations have been busy seeking approaches and tools to support senior managers in coping with this challenge, from organizational learning to knowledge management, from competitive intelligence to business intelligence, and from management information systems to strategic (executive) information systems. Before embarking on formulating and developing these approaches and tools, senior managers’ informational roles and information behavior should be understood. This paper explores factors influencing and shaping existing senior managers’ information behavior in order to shed light on value-added approaches or technological solutions for supporting and improving informational roles of senior managers. The findings show that information behavior of senior managers is influenced and shaped by a number of factors, mainly the organizational actors and organizational situations, followed by their affective responses and the use of technological tools.