Preface for the Third Edition - Read

6. Organization 215
The knowledge process starts with the creation of knowledge within a knowledge-intensive
business process. The knowledge created is then first valued, e.g.,
by a subject matter specialist, a knowledge broker or a community. The subsequent
step adds value to the knowledge in that it is e.g., classified, structured, formatted,
linked to other knowledge elements or contextualized. Then, the knowledge might
have to be stored, no matter whether the knowledge element is a document or a link
to an expert. Then it is distributed to participants that are potentially interested
(knowledge push) or it is retrieved in the course of a search initiated by participants
(knowledge pull) before it can be applied either within the same business process
or, as depicted in Figure B-25, in a different business process. The experiences
made during the application of knowledge are then collected as feedback and used
to improve the knowledge so that it is kept actual and relevant, links to participants
who have recently applied the knowledge can be updated and the degree to which it
has proven successful in application can be evaluated systematically. This cycle of
search, application, feedback and improvement can be repeated and involve several
business processes.
A comparison of the approaches to a process-oriented knowledge management
provides the following levels of intervention which are targeted by these
approaches (also Remus 2002):
goals and strategy: KM goals, KM strategies, relations to business goals 368 ,
organization: design of organizational structure, tasks, processes, roles, projects
etc.,
culture: organizational culture, group cultures, national cultures,
themes and topics: taxonomies, knowledge structures, ontologies, types of
knowledge, especially process-oriented knowledge,
participants and communities: human resource management, community management,
incentives and motivation, personalization,
instruments: KMS, services, organizational and technological infrastructure,
environment: markets, business models, business partners, business processes.
However, none of the approaches so far considers all of these levels 369 . There is
still some way to go until the well-established methods and tools for business process
reengineering in general and business process modeling in particular 370 can be
applied with KM in mind.
Two typical situations for the implementation of process-oriented KM concepts
can be distinguished (see Figure B-26) 371 .
1. Process management initiatives: These are initiated by an organizational unit or
project responsible for process management and expand their perspective
368. See also section 5.1.3 - “Process-oriented KM strategy” on page 108.
369. See the detailed comparison provided by Remus 2002.
370. A well known example for a method for process modeling frequently used especially in
German organizations is the event-driven process chain supported by the ARIS toolset
(see URL: http://www.ids-scheer.de/); see also section 6.6 - “Modeling” on page 237.
371. See Maier/Remus 2002, Remus 2002.