The knowledge economy that we are told we live in should have boosted the earnings potential of information professionals no end.

From isolation in a central library facility as little as a decade ago, information now pervades every corner of modern multinational companies.

By rights, the role of information officer should have been enhanced, too, with info pros elevated to the boardroom to oversee this expansion.

But this shift has not taken place, according to a straw poll of FTSE-100 companies conducted by vnunet.com's sister publication Information World Review, to assess the visibility of information officers in major organisations.

In fact, in many organisations we found the opposite to be true. Only a handful have a bona fide information officer, while many split the role between a couple of departments, or, in some cases, across separate company divisions.

The mysterious CIO
In several cases, companies were confused by the question of whether they had someone that fitted the description of a chief information officer (CIO).

Yes, they had a CIO, but he (and it is usually a he) handles IT without ever getting involved with information services, we were told.

We concentrated on companies in industrial and pharmaceutical sectors, where the proportion of research and development was likely to be high.

ICI, the chemicals group, was one of only a few to have a traditional CIO. Anthony Foster works just below board level and reports to the chief executive since the departure of the chief operating officer.

The company emphasises that this is a senior post with a wide remit and that it has a 'dotted line' chain of command linking the CIO into decisions made on IT and information services within each of ICI's four business units.

It is also an international role: Foster travels frequently, in line with other senior executives at a company that has just 10 per cent of its business in the UK.

But our survey found that Foster was in the minority. Unwieldy senior management structures have long ago been dismantled by most major corporations to satisfy shareholder concerns about excess.

Industrial companies in particular are run along product lines with usually just a slim executive board linking them together at the top.

Devolved function
In ICI's case one of its senior managers, who works across the group, runs information services. But in many others the function has been completely devolved and is handled at a much more junior level within each discrete division.

BOC, the industrial gases group, is a good example of this. Beneath the executive management board are three distinct divisions.

Each of those has a management board for each country or cluster of countries it operates in.

As a result, the chief information officer's traditional role is scattered across corporate relations, R&D and IT, with no distinct chief or reporting structure.

"It is not necessary to have a Big Brother impulse working from above," says a BOC spokesman.

Rolls-Royce is virtually identical, with little overlap between civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine and energy; although information formally comes under the remit of the director of communications, who reports into the chief executive.

BAE Systems, the defence group, is once again separated via business units. In addition, certain programmes are ring-fenced for security reasons.

There is nothing tying the bulk of information services together at the executive level because the various divisions require different information, says the company.

For example, it argues that journals for staff at the avionics arm would be unlikely to interest shipbuilders.

However, there is a slimmed-down core information function for the few common resources at BAE Systems.

For example, since it has had a company-wide intranet, a single agreement with Jane's for access to its defence yearbook prevents its 70 UK sites each ordering their own copy.

The deal was negotiated by the company's business development unit, which is part of its corporate marketing office.

How companies value information assets
Charles Oppenheim, professor of information science at Loughborough University and a former private sector information officer, is close to completing research into how companies value their information assets.

After interviewing a range of finance directors and senior information officers, he came to the conclusion that large companies in the UK are not interested in valuing their information assets by putting them on the balance sheet.

But they do value assets such as competitive intelligence and market research as being extremely important.

The research is due to be published in the Journal of Information Science later this year.

In the course of conducting this research, Oppenheim noted that in some cases there was a gulf between the seniority of the top money man and the company's nominated head of information.

"The money that a company has is regarded as a crucial resource," he explains. "Therefore the person in charge of the money should be at board level. The same attitude does not apply to information.

"Even though it is seen as being an important resource, they haven't taken the logical step of putting someone looking after it on the board."

However, despite his hypothesis that British industry is letting itself down by not having board level representation for information services, the results of his survey have caused Oppenheim to change his opinion.

"Notwithstanding the fact that they don't have somebody at board level, information does seem to be getting serious attention," he says.

"There is no evidence that a company without a CIO does better than a company with a CIO - which I am sure could be interpreted as being very disappointing for info pros."

Angela Abell, director of business development at TFPL, a recruitment consultancy with a background of working in information management, believes that the information centre has evolved as information has become more pervasive.

"Some people from that unit have moved into a much broader role, away from just external information to looking at wider concepts," she says.

"But in many organisations there is still nobody with a real overview of all the different elements. It makes it quite difficult to answer the question of who in this organisation understands the real information flows that underpin this company?

"The IT people have a view because they understand information architecture, the information professionals have a view of external information, and marketing has a view as well."

Split in traditional CIO role
At chemicals company Johnson Matthey the traditional role of the CIO is split.

Dr Barry Murrer runs the corporate research function, overseeing a corporate development team of three and the central library maintained in Oxfordshire.

Murrer reports to David Morgan, Johnson Matthey's corporate development director, who is an executive director of the company.

Morgan also oversees a group corporate development manager, who assesses new acquisitions, and group marketing development manager Martin Green, who hunts for new marketing opportunities.

Shire Pharmaceuticals has a chief information officer responsible purely for systems and IT.

A dedicated medical information sciences manager within each country is primarily responsible for providing a service to medical professionals, as well as internally.

In the UK, the manager runs a team of five. She reports into SPD, the group's R&D arm, and sits three steps below Shire's board level group research and development director.

Lesley Robinson, an independent information consultant and trustee for the City Information Group, which represents information professionals at law firms, finance houses and a handful of plcs, says that investment banks have tended to appoint vice presidents of information in senior roles.

The closest any of the companies surveyed have to the position she outlines is oil giant BP's group vice president (digital business), a position held by John Leggate.

Until last month he reported to Rodney Chase, the retiring deputy group chief executive.

A BP spokesman says the role exists so that one senior person can concentrate on all aspects of communication and information, leaving the other executives to get on with core competencies of oil exploration and production.

What's the alternative?
The alternative to a dedicated vice president or CIO, and a position increasingly commonplace over the last five years, is the chief knowledge officer (CKO) role.

Many companies have opted to create this when they want to build up the importance of information services, believes Abell.

"The idea [behind appointing a CKO] is that information is key but the way an organisation is different is how it uses it," she says.

"Knowledge is a far more complex thing than information because it is about a person's ability to make sense of information and do something useful with it."

Abell argues that, for an organisation to be successful, it requires a mixture of people who can share what they know, who can help pass on the expertise that can create knowledge, and who can source information.

"A CKO will not only look at information management, but will help people work together," she maintains.

The position tends to be filled by people who really understand the company or industry they are in - it is not so much their subject background that matters.

Unfortunately, this means few information professionals have been promoted to the new role of CKO, despite it being a post many hanker after, says Robinson.

Indeed, some information professionals have moved sideways into areas such as procurement to advance their careers because the path to becoming CKO has been barred by organisations preferring to appoint non-information specialists to the CKO role.

"Information professionals are not confident enough to shout about their skills and they are not in a position to knock on the CEO's door and tell him what to do," she says.

"This is partly because of the sort of people they are."

Oppenheim agrees. "People in information work tend to be quite quiet, shy and self-effacing," he says.

"They are not very assertive. There is this continuing worry that one of the reasons why there is nobody in an information role at a senior level is because they don't jump up and down enough."

TFPL has carried out research into strategic planning and how organisations might look in five to 10 years, and its findings offer some comfort.

It suggests that more information people will become embedded in big business, although the changes may not be obvious.

"The industry is beginning to find new role models who are becoming quite senior but they don't necessarily have the title of information manager," Abell says.

In some forward-thinking companies, the balance of power already appears to be turning in the information professionals' favour.

At BT, for example, the inaugural CKO, Marc Auckland, has stepped aside and the position has been merged with that of chief information officer.

James Ashton is a business journalist.