Preface for the Third Edition - Read

216 B. Concepts and Theories
towards KM. Examples are modeling business processes to improve process
visibility or analyzing business processes in terms of knowledge process reengineering
(KPR) (Allweyer, 1999) The documentation, monitoring and controlling
of business processes are often supported by a process management system and
documented in a process warehouse. The process warehouse can be expanded
with KMS functions in order to manage not only knowledge about the process,
but also knowledge created and applied in the process. Process visibility is often
the starting point for business process reengineering. In addition to more traditional
BPR instruments, knowledge-intensive business processes are partially
improved by methods such as KPR. KPR often focuses on the communication
structure between employees, on “soft” skills or an organizational culture supportive
of knowledge sharing (Davenport et al., 1996).
process-oriented
knowledge management
PM-initiatives KM-initiatives
process visibility
business process
(re-)engineering
process warehouse
FIGURE B-26. Starting points for process-oriented knowledge management 372
2. KM initiatives: The other situation is a KM project with a strong focus on
(knowledge-intensive) business processes. One typical starting point would be
the implementation of a KMS to support one or more business processes. An
example is to customize commercial KMS (i.e. KM portals, KM suites) so that
they support processes specific to the organization, e.g., the R&D process.
Besides this technology-driven approach, a more comprehensive KM initiative
sets a stronger focus on the organizational design, especially processes. It implements
KM instruments, such as content management, lessons learned or
employee yellow pages. In a process-oriented view, these KM instruments
would be designed and implemented as knowledge processes or lead to a redesign
of knowledge-intensive business processes.
Summing up, the integration of process orientation and knowledge management
provides for a promising research direction for knowledge management. The
implementation of process-oriented KM strategies can either start from a process
management or from a knowledge management initiative and comprises the com-
372. Source: Remus 2002, 205.
1
knowledge
process
reengineering
processes
content/
topic
strategy
instruments/
systems
knowledge
life cycle
levels of intervention
process
-oriented
kms
2
focus on
processes
knowledge
management
systems
knowledge
management