Marchand (1996, p.15 as cited in Douglas, 2010, pp.48-49) identified four types of information culture:

• Functional culture: managers use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others;
• Sharing culture: managers and employers trust each other to use information to improve their performance;
• Inquiring culture: managers and employees search for information to better understand the future and ways of changing what they do to align themselves with future trends/directions, and
• Discovery culture: managers and employees are open to new insights about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive discontinuities.

Davenport (1997, p.84 as cited in Douglas, 2010) distinguishes the following types of information culture:

• Open or closed;
• Factually oriented or rumour and intuition-based;
• Internally or externally focused;
• Controlling or empowering; and
• Having preferences for information channels or media.