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The focus of this paper is on the mediating role of medical records in patient care. Their informative, communicative and constitutive facets are analysed on the basis of a case study in an African University teaching hospital.

A practice-oriented approach and the concept of boundary objects were adopted to examine medical records as information artefacts. Data from nonparticipant observations and interviews with physicians were triangulated in a qualitative analysis.

Three distinctive practices for information sharing – absorbing by reading, augmenting by documenting and recounting by presenting – were identified as central to the mediating role of medical records in the care of patients. Additionally, three information-sharing functions outside the immediate care of patients were identified: facilitating interactions, controlling hegemonic order and supporting learning. The records were both a useful information resource and a blueprint for sustaining shared practices over time. The medical records appeared as an essential part of patient care and amendments to them resulted in changes in several other work practices.

The analysis contributes to research on documents as enacting and sustaining work practices in a workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how new healthcare professionals engage with information practices and information culture in their workplace, and the resulting influences on development and change.

A longitudinal study was conducted on a hospital training programme. Three series of focus groups provided data from 18 recently qualified nurses, supported by observations. Data were thematically analysed applying a framework consisting of six approaches to information use.

Newcomers take a proactive approach to seek, use and share scientific information, which is negotiated within existing information practices and organisational information culture. Their competencies, such as research skills, values, motivation and sense of integrity to use and share scientific information, often differ from those existing workplace practices. For this reason, they drive towards renewal and change.

Examination of organisational approaches to information use indicates clearly the necessity for improvements to meet the needs of information proactiveness and thus be able to face challenges and changes in an organisation.

This work sheds new light on newcomers’ information use, as they integrate into a workplace and interact with information practices and organisational approaches to information use. A significant contribution is the identification of the dynamics and interdependencies between newcomers’ individual agency in their way of seeking, using and sharing information, and the established community’s social agency promoting existing information practices and the organisational agency represented by information culture.

The purpose of the study is to examine enterprise searching practices across different work areas and work tasks in an enterprise search system in an international biotechnology company.

A mixed-method approach studying employees' authentic search activities during a 4-month period by log data, questionnaire survey and interviews. The log data analysed the entire active searcher group, whereas the questionnaire and interviews focused on frequent searchers.

The three studies provided insight into the searching activities and an understanding of the way searchers used the enterprise search system to search for information as part of their work tasks. The data identified three searcher groups, each with specific search characteristics. Four work task types were identified, and for all four types the searchers applied a tracing searching technique with use of contextual and historical relationships as paths.

The findings point to the importance of knowledge on historical and contextual relations in enterprise search.

The work sheds new light on enterprise searchers' information search practices. A significant contribution is the identification of a tracing search method used in relation to four essential work task types. Another contribution is the importance of historical and contextual knowledge to support the tracing search and decide what paths to follow.

This paper aims to examine the interaction between gatekeeping and trust in a public sector organization, where employees at lower hierarchical levels are expected to autonomously translate and transform directives into public services. This requires them to have access to operational steering information, i.e. information about directives and how to interpret and apply them. This study focuses on how gatekeeping structures regulate flows of operational steering information and how the gatekeeping structures affect the development of trust.

The research design is qualitative. The data material consisted of semi-structured interviews with 26 employees in home care and schools and of eight complementary nonparticipant observations. Thematic analysis revealed the presence of static and dynamic gatekeeping structures, which are characterized by fixed and variable arrangements of information sources and channels, respectively.

In static gatekeeping structures, managers or domain experts typically act as gatekeepers, and employees also perform gatekeeping activities collectively. Gatekeeping structures allow employees to switch between acting as gatekeepers and being gated, depending on the situation. The results show that gatekeeping structures for intermediation of operational steering information may support or impede employees' work, thus affecting their trust in their peers and their work organization.

Although the present study included both interviews and observations, these primarily occurred within scheduled and prearranged activities rather than capturing the nuances of the typical daily work of teachers and home care employees. As a result, certain perspectives may have been unintentionally omitted.

The participants were recruited through the City of Oslo contact people, which may have impacted their status or perception in some way. Moreover, the study was conducted in the City of Oslo, a specific organization with its own unique set of values, norms and processes. The trust-based management in the City of Oslo is likely not representative of all public sector organizations.

This study contributes conceptually by introducing gatekeeping structures and operational steering information and empirically by providing evidence of their relationship to trust development in public service delivery. Thus, it contributes to the research fields of information management and public administration.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse scholarly subjectivity in the context of citation practices in interdisciplinary PhD research.

The paper provides an analysis of longitudinal series of qualitative interviews with PhD students who write scholarly articles as dissertation components. Conceptualizations of subjectivity within practice theories form the basis for the analysis.

Scholarly argumentation entails a rhetorical paradox of “bringing something new” to the communication while at the same time “establishing a common ground” with an audience. By enacting this paradox through citing in an emerging interdisciplinary setting, the informants negotiate subject positions in different modes of identification across the involved disciplines. In an emerging interdisciplinary field, the articulation of scholarly subjectivity is a joint open-ended achievement demanding knowledgeability in multiple disciplinary understandings and conducts. However, identifications that are expressible within the informants’ local site, i.e. interactions with supervisors, other seniors and peers, are not always expressible when negotiating subject positions with journals.

This paper contributes to research on citation practices in emerging interdisciplinary fields. By linking the enactment of citing in scholarly writing to the negotiation of subject positions, the paper provides new insights about the complexities involved in becoming a scholar.

This paper explores the role of work-related information flows in trust-based management in public sector organizations. Whereas the relationship that trust affects information sharing between employees as such is well known, the opposite relationship where information flows that facilitate access to and sharing of work-related information affect trust is less studied.

The paper analyses survey data from 481 employees at lower hierarchical levels in home care and schools in the City of Oslo four years after the City Council decided to implement trust-based management, using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results from the path models indicate that work-related information flows mediate the impact of trust-based management, contribute to the development of trust in managers and increase employee autonomy.

A practical implication is that work-related information flows seem to be an important design variable in trust reforms. Organizations that plan to implement more trust-based management should therefore pay close attention to how changes in management systems and leadership practices impact work-related information flows.

This paper contributes to the public management literature and research on trust reforms by identifying the role of work-related information flows as a mediator in trust-based management. The paper provides new insights into the relationship between information flows, trust and autonomy by combining perspectives from public management, information studies and organizational behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how elite politicians in opposition in the Norwegian parliament use information when responding to government propositions and investigate if Chatman’s small world conception can explain the socially and economically highly privileged groups’ approach to information.

The qualitative analysis of the data consisting of eight interviews with seven members of parliament (MPs) and one political advisor is based on a selective coding grounded to Chatman’s six propositions on life in the round.

The overall findings indicate that elite politicians’ information practices concentrate in mastering the flow of information and admitting attention selectively, but on broad topics. Whereas MPs information practices within an intentional approach (i.e. to be used in political responses and debates) aligned with the small world idea, the nebulous approach (i.e. keeping updated on societal issues) breaks the boundaries of their “small worlds”.

The study provides a glimpse into information practises of a little studied group, elite politicians. Moreover, it applies Chatman’s conception of small world in a novel manner.

The purpose of this study is to investigate why users turn to the university library’s reference desk and whether librarians make use of the opportunity to conduct reference interviews to disclose any unexpressed information needs.

This paper presents the results from a qualitative exploration study where interactions between librarians and users were observed in authentic situations at the reference desk and analyzed using a modified version of Radford and Connaway’s (2013) categorization of inquiries.

Most inquiries were seemingly easy to answer and pertained to collections and procedures in the library. Lending out desk supplies accounted for a high proportion of the activity. Only a small number of requests were subject-oriented and reference interview techniques were only used in 5% of the recorded inquiries. This means that the users’ information needs were not probed in the vast majority of the interactions.

The study is exploratory and mirrors the activity that takes place in one specific library. The low number of reference interview techniques used may indicate a lack of interest in users’ information needs, which signifies a risk of the reference desk being reduced to an arena for instrumental and superficial interaction between librarians and users.

This study illustrates current developments in work at a physical library desk. Few recent studies address face-to-face interactions between librarians and users.