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@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@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@mit.edu -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@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 _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members