Middle managers claim to spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information necessary to their jobs, and when they do find it, it is often wrong.

A survey of more than 1,000 middle managers of large companies in the US and UK found that managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information, and more than 50% of the information they obtain has no value to them.

In addition, only half of the managers surveyed by Accenture, believe their companies do a good job in governing information distribution or have established adequate processes to determine what data each part of an organisation needs.

Just under half - 45% - said gathering information about what other parts of their company are doing is a big challenge, whereas only 31 percent said that competitor information is hard to get.

Royce Bell, CEO of Accenture Information Management Services (AIMS) said: “People and organisations cannot keep up with the volume of information produced by technological innovation. Managers in particular are having great difficulty navigating a rapidly expanding sea of information, and the situation is only getting worse.”