A Study on the Flow of Industrial Information in the Small-and Medium-Sized Industry

중소기업에서의 정보요구와 이용에 관한 연구

This research attempts to verify the hypothesis that the workers in the small-and medium-sized industries use more informal information channels than formal ones do to get the information necessary to industrial activities. Information sources are divided by the internal and the external ones and these are sub-divided by their acquiring channels, publishers and holding institutions. It is intended to investigate the information sources according to the use frequency, age, origin and format of documents used. The degree of benefit to the workers in their practical work through the use of information sources and the use frequency of information sources by the department and years of experience are also investigated. The data to test the hypothesis was collected through the questionnaires distributed to the workers in 300 sampled firms from June 5 to June 20, The following facts have been verified as the result : 1. Workers in industries acquire information mainly through the contacts with the colleagues or superiors in their departments, and the junior workers depend more on the colleague and superiors than senior workers are. 2. Among the documents published internally, the ones from the research and development departments are mostly used. The documents issued by the worker's own departments are also frequently used and the senior workers, the more frequently use the internal publications than the junior workers do. 3. Among the internal documents stored in various places in the industries, the documents kept in the worker's own departments are used most frequently. The senior workers the more use privately owned documents than the junior workers do. 4. As far as the external channels are concerned, information is obtained mainly through suppliers of equipment and raw materials and the use frequency of information channels varies according to department. The senior workers the more receive information through supporting institution, seminar and exhibition than the junior workers do. 5. Among the external publication, the ones published by the industrial supporting institutions are heavily used and the workers in research and developments frequently use the external publications. 6. The documents held in governmental industrial institutions and industrial supporting institutions are heavily used compared with the ones stored in other external institutions. The holding places of frequently used documents vary according to the working departments. 7. The degree of benefit to practical work performance resulted from the internal information use is less than by the use of external information. 8. The documents published more than five years ago are more used than the ones of less than five years, Korean and Japanese documents are used frequently and catalogues, patents and standards are used to a great extent. The documents are used differently in accordance with work departments.