Semiotic Analysis of Knowledge Intensive Business Processes: Developing Interpretations for Sustainable Competitive Advantage

In the age of information technology and internet, business processes in many organizations have evolved into a series of knowledge exchanging activities. This is especially the case of multi-national corporations, which have e-business activities spread across multiple locations world-wide. Under these circumstances, for any multi-national corporation, comprehending and responding strategically-in-time to the various positive and negative events that occur in a knowledge intensive business process are essential if sustainable competitive advantage is to be gained and retained. Grounded in semiotics, this paper presents an approach for understanding knowledge intensive business processes. Semiotic analysis helps in interpreting and making sense of the meanings afforded by different organizations to the positive and negative events and how these meanings relate to each other and, in turn, to the knowledge intensive business processes. Such an understanding allows easier creation and transfer knowledge between different organizations or networks of organizations and helps in defining knowledge intensive business processes for sustainable competitive advantage

Practices of knowledge intensive process management: quantitative insights

Purpose – In contemporary businesses, the importance of knowledge workers and the knowledge intensive business processes (KIBPs) is ever increasing, yet they seem very hard to control and manage. The purpose of this paper is to grasp the specific characteristics of KIBPs and how they differ from non‐knowledge intensive business processes (non‐KIBP), also to question how organizations are using business process management (BPM) to manage and improve KIBPs. The differences in maturity and effectiveness of both types of processes are also evaluated. Design/methodology/approach – Data for this research were collected through an online survey. The survey was designed based on a previously conducted exploratory study with semi‐structured interviews as well as the literature. The target group was BPM practitioners and the final sample included 98 respondents. Due to non‐normality, the analyses were conducted with non‐parametric tests. The research questions were analysed using Mann‐Whitney U test and Spearman's correlations. Findings – It was found that KIBP and non‐KIBP have clearly different characteristics, such as the level of complexity, repeatability and creativity required. Also it was found that these processes are not managed or improved differently than non‐KIBPs, and suggest that organizations need to take these differences into consideration while managing and improving these processes. Furthermore, the results suggest that applying methodologies that aim to provide operational improvements may not necessarily produce the best results for KIBPs. Originality/value – The paper answers a call for further development of the body of knowledge on knowledge‐intensive business processes, a rapidly emerging field of interest for BPM practitioners, where a clear gap in literature exists

An approach to managing the complexity of knowledge intensive business processes

Organisations face ever growing complexity in the business environment and use processes to deliver value in a stable, sustainable and controllable way. However complexity in the business environment is threatening the stability of processes and forcing their continuing evolution in ever shorter time cycles, which then creates significant management challenges. Addressing complexity requires a change in management thinking about processes.The research explores the nature of complexity, how businesses respond to it, and the consequent impact on process complexity. The research reviews the notion of complexity and its relevance to organisations, business processes and knowledge contexts. The research focuses on knowledge intensive firms, as these exhibit several of the features and allow early application of the approach suggested by this thesis. The research draws upon concepts from several fields including complexity and complex systems, business process management, and knowledge management.This thesis addresses the question: “How can organisations address the complexity of knowledge intensive business processes?” In answering the question the thesis argues the need to integrate multiple perspectives involved in managing such processes, proposes an approach to complex knowledge intensive business processes that reduces the management challenge, and argues the need to develop an agile shared knowledge context in support of the approach.This thesis develops a theoretical framework consisting of a set of hypotheses rooted in the literature, and then proposes an approach to addressing complex knowledge intensive business processes based upon these hypotheses. Then,through a series of QDS investigations and action research cycles, this thesis tests the hypotheses, further develops the approach and examines its application in different problem domains in multiple organisations. This thesis then discusses the process and the outcomes of applying the approach, identifies its limitations, assesses its contribution to knowledge and suggests directions for further research

An Evaluation Framework for Improving Knowledge-Intensive Business Processes

In the move from the industrial to the knowledge economy, organisations have shifted the focus from the improvement of their production processes to the improvement of their collaborative processes in a bid to optimise the effectiveness of their human capital. Our goal is to provide stakeholders of knowledge-intensive business processes with information about the performance of their process that allows them to make practical improvements to the process to gain a competitive edge. In this paper, we present the framework that we have developed to evaluate the tender response process for its organisational knowledge creation capability. We report here on the progress of our research and our interim findings

The interrelationship between knowledge management and business process management and its impact on the decision-making process in the construction sector : a case study of Jordan

In recent years, Knowledge has always been accepted as being a valuable asset. In particular, it has become an important factor for the construction industry. To adapt to changes in the local and global business environment including the information technology revolution and to cope with the new competition, construction organisations have attempted to manage and apply their knowledge effectively and efficiently. The literature has shown that several problems in relation to the decision-making process in the construction sector in general and in particular, in Jordan, have been identified, e.g. selecting suppliers, equipment, and contractors. Because of the numerous number of business processes associated with making key decisions which require eliciting the correct knowledge to facilitate performing those business processes, there is a gap in the integration between knowledge management and business processes with regard to the decision making process. In order to bridge this gap, this research was carried out in order to investigate and explain how organisations in the construction sector can enhance the decision-making process (DMP) by practicing knowledge management (KM) and business process management (BPM) activities. To fulfil this aim, a mixed-methods approach has been adopted, combining a literature review approach, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect data from the Jordanian construction organisations. A framework has been proposed. This framework contains three elements with twelve sub-variables with all of these determined from an extensive review of previous studies and validated through an empirical survey. The quantitative data was obtained from the respondents through the use of a five-point Likert scale. To refine and validate the proposed framework, semi-structured interviews were then carried out with selected, experienced practitioners in the construction sector in order to elicit their views on any element that should be added to the framework in addition to those that had been discovered within the literature review and synthesis, and to discover if the domain experts supported the outcomes from the questionnaire survey and to verify the findings achieved from the questionnaire analysis. The current study provides a method of acquiring a more comprehensive knowledge of the importance of KM alongside BPM for the improvement of DM styles to attain organisational goals. It generates a strong operational as well as theoretical approach to the organisational utilization of knowledge and business processes through the development of an associated theoretical framework. While previous studies have indicated that knowledge enablers along with business processes guarantee organisational achievement across organisational DMP, this research shows that precise decision-making determination by decision makers could strengthen the relationship chain