This week's prompts were:

What is information culture and how can we use the OI framework to consider the ways an organisation thinks about information?

This week I considered the rise and rise of Atlassian.

How did two Australian Uni students build a tech empire that made them billionaires?

Atlassian Co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar on the Future of  Work

I was interested in Atlassian as the company has risen from a small Australian start up to a global enterprise. I also noticed how Atlassian's CEOs were becoming more prominent in the news through their roles as philanthropists and advocates for renewable energy which stretched them into domains beyond software development. As a relatively young organisation, I thought Atlassian provided an opportunity to see how OI is enacted (after, Weick, 1988) as an example of a local company that grew from two founders to thousands of employees. For example, it was interesting to note the way Atlassian not only designed new information systems, but as the company grew, how the CEOs established new forms of information culture and practices as part of their organisational ethos (Rotenstein, 2011).

As a young startup company in 2002, Atlassian was able to leapfrog standard communication processes of the time. Since their software was designed to aid collaboration, Rotenstein (2011) also sets out how Atlassian adopted an 'Open Information' policy from the start. For example, they set expectations that staff would bypass using email and openly share all communication via Atlassian's wiki platform. From an OI perspective we could say this way of working became the 'new norm' and established a new form of information culture for their company and possibly for other organisations buying into their product.

By looking at Atlassian as an organisational case, I could see how both early innovation, as well as more expected corporate behaviour, has played out over time. As a company like Atlassian grows and their operation becomes more sophisticated it's interesting to see whether they can sustain their early level of innovation. In the case of imposing one type of communication over a more usual forms (eg email), I would also question whether that could stifle opportunities and innovations? Also, given the example of Atlassian's refocus on bringing together developer tools as an innovation (see Moore, 2017), it's interesting to think about how the organisation balanced aspects of information that they wouldn't want competitors to know about?

Moore, M. (2017). Atlassian unveils new DevOps Marketplace and the Atlassian Stack. SD Times. https://sdtimes.com/atlassian/atlassian-unveils-new-devops-marketplace-atlassian-stack

Rotenstein, J.  (2011). It's the Culture, Stupid! How Atlassian maintains an open Information Culture. Management Exchange. https://www.managementexchange.com/users/john-rotenstein

Weick, K.E. (1988). Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations. Journal of Management Studies. 25(4), 305-317.

For this forum post - do some brief desktop research to explore a new organisation.
Take a look at the organisation 'in the round' based on their website and other articles where they are mentioned. 
Consider how the organisation approaches information culture. How does this relates to the OI  framework?