Proceedings of FSWKS_06 conference abstracts

Towards an effective integration of collaboration and information management

Title:
"Towards an effective integration of collaboration and information management"


Author:
António Lucas Soares
(INESC Porto, FEUP, Porto, Portugal)



Technical and organizational innovation processes e.g., business process reengineering and work redesign are normally loosely coupled leading to a sub-optimal socio-technical system. Closer interaction between these design processes is needed which calls for multi-disciplinary development teams sharing knowledge and competencies. A new category of methodological tools supported by modern knowledge management technologies is needed in order to make feasible such complex development processes.
In this presentation we will summarise the results of three projects dealing with multi-disciplinary approaches to the design of information systems for collaborative work focused on information and knowledge management.
The first project present a new way for organizational analysis to improve the quality of the requirements of systems that support information management and where collaboration is an important aspect. This is achieved through the application of the social network analysis approach, applied to refine, classify and prioritize the requirements for collaboration and information management in an organization.
The second case is the development of a knowledge community support system in the context of an industrial association group in the construction sector. This system is a result of the Know-Construct project which aims at providing association sponsored SME communities of the construction sector with a sophisticated information management platform and community building tools for knowledge sharing.
The third project regards to the development of a tool for the collaborative design of business processes and work organization. This tool is intended to support a multi-disciplinary team of employees and consultants in large technological and organizational development processes.


Key-words:

Innovation processes, work design, business process, collaborative design, knowledge management, socio-technical system.