A Workflow-centric Study of Organizational Knowledge Distribution

Abstract

Organizations require mechanisms to efficiently distribute knowledge such as news releases, seminar announcements, and memos. While the machinery for information storage, manipulation. and retrieval exists, research dealing directly with knowledge distribution in an organizational context is scarce. In this paper, we address this need by first examining the pros and cons of the conventional "mailing lists" approach and then proposing new workflow mechanisms that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge distribution. The main contributions of this study include: (I) a workflow perspective on organizational knowledge distribution. (2) workflow analysis of two new knowledge distribution methods based on dynamic mailing lists and profile matching, respectively, and (3) a new way of matching knowledge supply and demand that extends existing information filtering algorithms.