L. Enterprise Search and Collective Mind Proceedings of the Seventeenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Detroit, Michigan August 4th-7th 2011 1 Enterprise search and collective mind: Patterns of information-seeking behavior in organizations

Enterprise search technology retrieves digital objects and internally generated content within organizations. Unlike other retrieval environments, enterprise search is a community of practice which responds to expected activity at similar times. Collective mind theory (Weick & Roberts, 2003) is similar to retrieval environments where the unplanned movements of multiple people move towards a similar end. An inductive, interpretive (Walsham, 1995) case study (Yin, 2009) was conducted in a government agency to understand enterprise search practices. The method of analysis was analytic induction (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Interviews, observations and search interfaces were interpreted through theory and summarized in a process model. The model illustrates relationships between search interfaces and sequences of activity. This study identified the phenomenon of collective information-seeking behavior in organizations. The results provide a unique way to understand the role of search interface design for information systems.