3.3. Information Overload
Interpretation within or across organizational units is less effective if the information
to be interpreted exceeds the units' capacity to process the information adequately
(see the study by Meier 1963, and the reviews by Driver and Streufert 1969,
and Miller 1978, Chapter 5). This fact was vividly portrayed by Schlesinger in his testimony to the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations:
What happened in Viet Nam is that we were simply drowned in statistics; we were drowned in
information. A very small proportion of this information was adequately analyzed. We would have
been much better off to have a much smaller take of information and to have done a better job of
interpreting what that information meant (Schlesinger 1970, p. 482).
Clearly, overload detracts from effective interpretation. Further, as a result of
variability in cognitive maps across units, even uniform overload, by creating ambiguity
in the perceived input, will lead to nonuniform interpretation. This is because
Presented with a complex stimulus, the subject perceives in it what it is ready to perceive; the
more complex or ambiguous the stimulus, the more perception will be determined by what is already
"in" the subject and the less by that is in the stimulus (Bruner 1957, pp. 132-1331,
Overload that is not uniform across units leads, of course, to even greater disparities
in the uniformity of interpretation and learning.
In his discussion of information overload, Simon (1973) concludes that organization
designs that minimize the need for information distribution among the organization's
units reduce the information load on the units, and should be adopted by organizations
in excessively rich information environments. But this "design for informational
autonomy" would reduce information sharing across units and would consequently
curtail some types of organizational learning. For arguments supporting this latter
point, in the research and development context, see Sitkin (forthcoming). Clearly the
informational interconnectedness of units affects organizational learning in complex
ways, and is one of the variables that should be investigated in future research.