The relationship between perceived value and information source use during KM strategic decision-making: A study of 17 Chinese business managers

The study explores the relationship between value attribution and information source use of 17 Chinese business managers during their knowledge management (KM) strategic decision-making. During semi-structured interviews, the Chinese business managers, half in the telecommunications sector and half in the manufacturing sector, were asked to rate 16 information sources on five-point Likert Scales. The 16 information sources were grouped into internal–external and personal–impersonal types. The participants rated the information sources according to five value criteria: relevancy, comprehensiveness, reliability, time/effort, and accessibility. Open-ended questions were also asked to get at how and why value attribution affected the participants’ use of one information source over another during decision-making. Findings show that the participants preferred internal–personal type of information sources over external–impersonal information sources. The differences in value ratings per information source were striking: Telecommunications managers rated customers, newspapers/magazines, and conferences/trips much lower than the manufacturing managers but they rated corporate library/intranet and databases much higher than manufacturing managers. The type of industrial sector therefore highly influenced information source use for decision-making by the study’s Chinese business managers. Based on this conclusion, we added organizational and environmental categories to revise the typology of factors affecting Chinese managers’ information source preferences during decision-making.