An E-Mail-Based Information Sharing System for Intra-Corporate Coordination

We have proposed an e-mail-based information sharing system for intra-corporate coordination. The objective of this system is, by avoiding undesirable side effects due to inappropriate information transfer, to coordinate the activities of groups in a corporate organization who have different levels of authority and accountability. This paper discusses four technological developments that enable the system. The first is the concept of “titles to share information” (TSI) to reflect the fact that allowable actions of individuals to send or receive information differ depending on their organizational positions, i.e., authority and accountability. TSI are classified into four levels according to the degree of autonomous information sharing actions granted. The second is a taxonomy of information sharing based on the four-level TSI model. Defined categories are passive sharing and active sharing; active sharing is further divided into bilateral sharing and unilateral sharing. Unilateral sharing is described as the subject for intra-corporate coordination. The third is a communication means to hide actions to transmit and gather information that prevent side effects due to inappropriate information transfer. This is a combination of e-mail and databases that makes the sender/receiver relationships invisible. The fourth is a system architecture that relates information sharing activities at each TSI level to PLAN, DO, and SEE activities of corporate organizations.