Information economy

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The information economy forms a fourth sector alongside the traditional economic sectors of agriculture, industry and services. The central resource or the central production factor is information that is independent of a physical good , hence the designation as an information sector . Information economy is also seen as the economic dimension of the information society .

The economist Fritz Machlup divides the information economy into five industrial groups, each with five subgroups:

  1. Education ( schools )
  2. Communication media ( TV )
  3. "Information machines" ( musical instruments )
  4. Information services ( medicine )
  5. other information services ( research and development )

The information economy shapes the information society , which, according to Alvin Toffler, is described as the third wave of stage theory. The first wave is the agricultural society and the second wave is the industrial society (see also Kondratiev cycle ).

Levels of change in the transition to the information economy

Macroeconomic level

Macroeconomically , information economies are characterized by a high share of employment in the information sector. A distinction is made between the primary and the secondary information sector. In the former, information goods are produced which are traded directly in the market. The latter, on the other hand, covers internal organizational information work. The information processed here can be viewed as separate from the market. Information work in the secondary area does not serve the production and distribution of information goods as an end in itself, but should support other (internal organizational) activities, sometimes with considerable expenditure of time, material and personnel.

This results in the problem of the direct measurability for the scope of information work, so that the infrastructure has to be used as an indicator. The productivity paradox for the use of information and communication technology can partly be explained by this.

Microeconomic level

From a microeconomic point of view, conscious planning of information procurement is a goal of systematic optimization of business processes. In many cases, there is no imagination for the possibilities of information chaining of asynchronous, sequential or consecutive information. Therefore, information that is already accessible or even already available is often retrieved again without checking the new entry against the available information inventory . The newly acquired information thus remains just as insecure as information previously acquired without checking and does not result in any qualified increase in information .

Particularly uneconomical is the attempt to reduce the technical uncertainty by making high demands on the instruments of information procurement and to forego the comparison operations with existing information. This continues with the fact that existing information is underestimated and newly acquired information is overestimated. An example of this is the exaggerated expectation in RFID technology: Group identification (bulk reading) will never give the certainty that completeness is adequately checked without additional information. However, the fuzziness of information acquisition is often ignored in planning. In practice, the distance between desire and reality becomes apparent.

The inefficient use is favored by a reduction in the specific transaction costs , which can be continuously observed from a technical point of view. As a result, a "move-to-the-market" was expected from the first promoters of the idea of ​​the information society , ie a renunciation of hierarchical exchange relationships . So far, however, a “move-to-the-middle” between the purely market-based and the hierarchical coordination of the exchange relationships has been observed.

Business level

From a business point of view, the information economy in interaction with the information society as a whole and the new information technologies creates challenges for companies, which also have an impact on them via markets. The new role of the consumer in particular creates a new set of challenges.

The management and marketing of information goods should also be emphasized . These goods, such as media content, books, software, and so on, differ significantly in their properties from traditional goods. Almost all information goods have network effects and are subject to the information paradox, i.e. the fact that the quality cannot be adequately assessed before the transaction.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the Unites States (1962)
  2. ↑ http://www.openpr.de/pdf/46454/99-prozentige-RFID-Lesequote-im-METRO-Group-Distributionszentrum-Mehr-als-50-000-erfasst-Paletten-bis-jetzt.pdf

literature

  • The Limitless Enterprise - Information, Organization and Management, in: Textbook on Corporate Management in the Information Age , ( A. Picot , R. Reichwald and R. Wigand) (5th updated edition 2003)