Social BPM – The role of social networks in business process management

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estatística e Gestão de Informação

In recent years, social networks have assumed an important role in life of millions of people and more recently in life of organizations, that are discovering their potential. We are living in a context of a generalized crisis in Europe and in the world but we are also live in a globalized Europe an world, where achieving competitive advantage depends much of means either than productive ones. Some of this factors have evolve and are now almost inseparable of organizations allowing to built holistic vision of their systems people, information and equipments. Knowledge management, information management and business process management are recognized as a source of competitive advantage as well, but just like social network not all organizations already understand their potential. For the development of the thesis we did a qualitative research based on a literature review and a case study on a Portuguese airline whose key findings are centred on the fact that social networks, by bring voices that are dispersed, enable to organizations to have more and better knowledge which can be used in process redesign and thus achieving competitive advantage. This study contributes to understand how SN can help organizations improve their Business Process and how Business Process Management (BPM), Knowledge, Social Computing and Social BPM, interact and influence each other and help organizations optimize their processes.