forms which supply working information to the various parts of the organizatio

Included here are the reports, records, and

other. forms which supply working information to the various parts of the organization;

the orders, instructions and messages which flow up and down the organization’s

authority structure; and the letters, sales presentations, advertising, and publicity which

go to an organization’s publics. These main channels do not just happen; they are

carefully thought out, or at least they should be. In the modern office, these channels are

fonned by cOI?puter information

systems. Information from work stations is put into the

I

company’s data base. And from the data base

the information can be assembled at the work station

needing it. .

Our overview also shows us a secondary network of information flow cOITesponding to

the veins of the body. This is the network made up of the thousands upon thousands of

personal communications which take place in any organization. Such communications

follow no set pattern but rather form an intricate and infinitely complex web of infonnation

flow linking all of the members of the organization in one way or another.

The complexity of the network cannot be overemphasized, especially in the larger

organizations. Typically it is not a single network at all. Rather, it is a complex relation of

smaller networks made up of groups of people. The relationships are made even more

complex by the fact that the people in the organization may belong to more than one of

these groups, and group memberships and the linking between groups are continually

changing. Truly, the network structure in a large organization is so complex as to defy

description.