The Centre for Information Management (CIM) is a cross-disciplinary research centre at Loughborough University. The centre was established in 2013 to critically engage with the power, potential, and perils of information in the digital age. Our mission is to lead responsible innovation in the ways in which organizations create and deploy information. To do this, we confront questions of the use of data, information and associated systems and technologies. We advocate for, and we problem-solve over, the ethical, sustainable, and inclusive development of an information society.
Responsible Information Management
Organizations of all types, including private firms, NGOs and government departments, are created through their information processes. Changes made to these information processes necessarily change the foci, efficiency, and effectiveness of the organizations concerned. Essentially then, through Information Management, we focus on the generative nature of firms. The research agenda of Information Management allows for creative investigation of the complex and systemic character of organizations. We analyse and describe how these organizations are generated, how they access and use information, and how these information processes, in turn, generate scope, boundaries and valuable networks beyond.
Writing back in 1999, with the digital era still in its infancy, Shapiro and Varian stated, “information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce.” This, like other statements by experts, signalled how new information technologies would alter the nature of business and broader networks across society. What is now classified as a “Digital Transformation” is characterised by the most valuable firms in history (“costly to produce”) and widespread, multiple ramifications across society (“cheap to reproduce.”) Our 21st Century technologies of digitalization have been stunning in their consequence but not always good for people, organization and society. For every new efficiency or convenience gained, there has also been a reconstruction of power and the creation or reallocation of negative outcomes.
This is why the Centre for Information Management (CIM) pioneers the concept of responsible information management (Responsible IM). Information processes are hugely consequential, and it is vital that they are used towards socially beneficial outcomes. Through Responsible IM we seek an integrated approach that embeds ethics, societal impact, and sustainability across the lifecycle of information and digital systems. We unite scholarship on information systems, digital ethics, cybernetics, AI governance, data sustainability, knowledge management, and socio-technical design to renew the promise of the digital era; to do digital right.
