[SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"?

[Thomas Haigh]

To expand on JoAnne's point, I believe that this term (and its relative
"functional silos") comes from the visual structure of the organization
chart. On an organization chart the primary relationships run up and down,
showing the chain of command. There are no lateral connections. Thus all the
boxes representing a major staff function or division of the company cluster
in a tall but narrow part of the chart with no direction connections to
other functional areas of the organization except by going up to a high
level executive with responsibility for both areas. The vertical cluster
looks something like a grain silo, and like a grain silo the material inside
it is separated from the material held in adjacent silos.

This is, of course, a problem where rank-and-file members of the different
parts of the organization need to work together on a project, to serve a
customer, to carry out a business process, etc. In practice any organization
needs to find a way for those things to happen, and there have been formal
innovations like matrix management, project based cross functional teams,
etc. intended to accomplish it.

Clearly the idea of an "information silo" is a specialized version of the
same complaint, addressing the tendency to hoard information within
particular functionally specialized parts of the organization rather than
sharing it more generally.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of JoAnne Yates
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 3:14 PM
To: Janet Abbate; sigcis
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"?

I don't know for sure which came first, but the term "organizational silos"
has been around for a long time, and it could have come from that.

JoAnne Yates
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management MIT Sloan School of Management
E62-335
100 Main St.
Cambridge, MA 02142
jyates at mit.edu




-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Janet Abbate
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2013 3:11 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Origin of term "information silo"?

Does anyone know the origin of the term "information silos"? It's commonly
used as a criticism of groups that don't share information for either
organizational or technical reasons. 

This has always struck me as an odd metaphor. After all, in real life it's a
good thing that grain is isolated in a silo; there is no physical-world
benefit to connecting or "busting" silos, so how did this become a metaphor
for good information management? And why would slowly fermenting fodder be a
good metaphor for information?

I'm assuming here that the term refers to farming and not to missile
silos... which would be equally odd. 

Janet

Dr. Janet Abbate
Associate Professor
Science & Technology in Society
Virginia Tech
www.sts.vt.edu/ncr
www.linkedin.com/groups/STS-Virginia-Tech-4565055
www.facebook.com/VirginiaTechSTS



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