Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook [Hardcover]

Thomas W. Malone (Editor), Kevin Crowston (Editor), George A. Herman (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2003

The vision of the MIT Process Handbook Project is the creation of a systematic and powerful method of organizing and sharing business knowledge. Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook presents the key findings of a multidisciplinary research group at MIT's Sloan School of Management that has worked for over a decade to lay the foundation for just such a comprehensive system. It does so by focusing on the process itself. The book proposes a set of fundamental concepts to guide analysis and a classification framework for organizing knowledge, and describes the publicly available online knowledge base developed by the project, which includes a set of representative templates and specific case examples as well as a set of software tools for organizing and sharing knowledge.Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook includes twenty-one papers, some previously published and some appearing for the first time, that have come out of this decade-long project. Together, they form a comprehensive and coherent vision of the future of knowledge organization. The Handbook is organized into five parts: an introduction and overview; the presentation of a theory of process representation; "Contents of the Process Repository"; "Process Repository Uses," which gives examples from both research and practice; and a conclusion, which maps the progress so far and the challenges ahead.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In our enormously complex world, disruption is an inevitability and resilience a requirement. Yossi Sheffi's landmark book offers managers a comprehensive approach to preparing for what cannot predicted."--Michael Hammer, author of *Reengineering the Corporation*

"An important contribution to the emerging science of processes." Michael Hammer, author of Reengineering the Corporation

"An important contribution to the emerging science of processes."--Michael Hammer, author of *Reengineering the Corporation*

About the Author

George A. Herman is on the research staff at the Center for Coordination Science, and Managing Editor of the Process Handbook.

Kevin Crowson is Associate Professor of Information Studies at Syracuse University School of Information Studies.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 633 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262134292
• ISBN-13: 978-0262134293
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,281,730 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Foundational Work on Business Process Knowledge, December 7, 2011

By 

Fred Cheyunski - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook (Hardcover)

Malone, as editor, and his contributing authors pose many questions in examining ways work can be represented and put together in different ways

Questions include a number of "how's" and "where's." How can we move beyond the practices of today to invent the best practices of tomorrow? Where will we keep getting new ideas for organizational processes to adapt to a continually changing world? How can we understand and exploit the new organizational possibilities enabled by the continuing, dramatic improvements in information technology?

Malone and co-authors suggest that key intellectual challenges are how to represent organizational processes and how to provide a means for decomposing business processes into sub-activities. One of their intents is to explore and compare many different possible combinations of specialization and coordination processes. They place substantial importance on the role of intelligent human ``editors'' in selecting, refining, and structuring ways this knowledge is to be represented.

They describe a website that provides a comprehensive and powerful approach to provide such information. This site serves as a "proof of concept' for organizing business knowledge.

Their hope is that this research will help us understand the possibilities for creating new kinds of organizations that are not only more effective but also more fulfilling for their members.

In this reviewer's opinion, this work fulfills the co-authors intentions here and lays the foundation for equally compelling books on "Inventing Organizations for the 21st Century" and "The Future of Work."