Personal traits and overload
information pull - need for cognition?
information push - need for recognition?
appropriate and pathological states
In general, push works best when it's used for information that must be accessed and acted on immediately.
Notes:
Human factors enter the situation in terms of the propensity of people to demand information and to disseminate it to others - information pull and push, in the computer jargon.
Information pull is related to what researchers have called the need for cognition - the extent to which people feel a need to structure and understand their life-world and who seek information to do this. Given that management is 'knowledge work', we can hypothesise that managers will be high in need for cognition and, consequently, will tend to acquire information. A key point is that, the more uncertain their life-world, the more they will be driven to do this.
A pathological state of information pull exists when a person feels impelled to collect information, whether relevant to his or her situation or not.
�Push technology' exists to facilitate the distribution of information. Experience with this technology leads to the conclusion that, "In general, push works best when it's used for information that must be accessed and acted on immediately. " (Mullich, 1999?) and companies that have employed push technology have withdrawn its use, replying upon information pull - employees accessing information when they need to.
Anyone can act as an 'information pusher', simply by disseminating paper or electronic documents. When this is done on a 'need to know' basis, it may not become problematic, but, again, pathological states of information push may exist for various reasons.