Special Issue on

  Learning, Teaching, and Disseminating Knowledge in Business Process Management

Guest Editors:

In recent years, Business Process Management (BPM), a set of structured methods and technologies for managing business processes, has emerged as a powerful concept used by organisations across all industries. Designing, measuring, improving, simulating, and controlling business processes has become the central challenge to improve organisations´ performance and to ensure success in a highly competitive world. As a result, the need for BPM expertise is increasing with many BPM-related roles emerging, which often requires new sets of skills. Thus, BPM education has been raised as a perennial topic.

The topic of BPM education has many different facets. For example, the challenges of converting the ‘function-oriented’ organisations and its employees to process-oriented thinkers; effectively training employees to select and use the specific methods and tools for managing business processes within the different areas of designing, measuring, improving, simulating, and controlling, and the overall challenges of teaching a complex multi­disciplinary domain like BPM.  Furthermore, it is recognised that BPM education is not only required for those in BPM specific roles in an organisation, but an essential requirement for employees on all levels including top executives, supervisory board members, workers associations, and other stakeholders – to ensure acceptance and support for improvement initiatives. The required skill sets for BPM capabilities are very diverse and include business skills, technical skills, and a range of soft-generic-skills such as facilitation, negotiation, relationship, and change management, and to date there is a lack and a need for a clear body of BPM knowledge. A further challenge is how to spread BPM-related knowledge to all levels of an organization to ensure BPM thinking is embedded in all daily actions. Subse­quently, there are many issues awaiting to be examined, studied, and addressed.

This special issue of the KM&EL international journal is dedicated to learning, instructing, and disseminating knowledge in the field of BPM. In this call, we invite manuscripts that report empirical studies (both quantitative and qualitative) of investigating issues and challenges related to BPM education as well as the use or design of tools supporting teaching efforts. In addition, this special issue welcomes manuscripts discussing conceptual frameworks or theoretical constructs related to learning, teaching, and disseminating BPM knowledge.

Recommended topics of interest include, but not limited to:

• Strategies of learning and educating about BPM
• What should be taught under the ‘BPM’ banner?
• Curriculum design for BPM training in companies, government, and universities
• Learners’ perceptions and their impact on their participation in BPM initiatives
• Learners’ motivation in BPM initiatives
• Strategies and tools to facilitate learning in the BPM context
• Role of instructors, coaches, or facilitators in BPM
• Role plays and other tools for teaching purposes in BPM projects
• New approaches to delivering BPM education, including the use of collaborative tools, Web-based conferencing, and social networking
• Best practices for incorporating advanced information technology into BPM education
• Use of advanced technologies such as process simulation for (distance) education
  in BPM
• Constructs and factors influencing the success of learning and educating BPM knowledge

• Strategies and tools to facilitate peer interactions, collaboration, and other learning activities
• Setting up a BPM center of excellence to disseminate BPM know-how
• Building, managing, and sustaining knowledge on BPM

Important Dates  

Submission due: 20th July, 2012

Notification of decision: 20th October, 2012

Finalization: 20th November 2012

Publication schedule: Dec 2012 (No. 4, 2012)

Submission Instructions

Manuscripts should be sent by email to one of the Guest Editors (j.moormann@fs.de or w.bandara@qut.edu.au).

Papers must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A standard double-blind review process will be used for selecting papers to be published in this special issue. Authors should follow the instructions outlined in the KM&EL Journal Website (see URL http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions).