A Proposal to Model Knowledge Dimension in Sensitive

Business Processes

Mariam Ben Hassen, Mohamed Turki, Faïez Gargouri

ISIMS, MIRACL Laboratory, University of Sfax,

P.O. Box 242, 3021 Sfax, Tunisia

mariembenhassen@yahoo.fr, mohamed.turki@isetsf.rnu.tn, faiez.gargouri@isims.rnu.tn

Abstract. Knowledge development in organizations relies on Sensitive Business Processes

(SBPs), which are characterized by a high complexity and dynamism in their execution,

high number of critical activities with intensive acquisition, sharing, storage and (re)use of

very specific crucial knowledge, diversity of knowledge sources, and high degree of

collaboration among experts. In this paper, we propose a semantically rich conceptualization

for describing a SBP organized in a new Business Process Meta-model for Knowledge

Identification (BPM4KI), in order to develop a rich and expressive graphical representation

of SBPs to identify and localize the crucial knowledge. BPM4KI covers all aspects of

business process modeling: the functional, organizational, behavioral, informational,

intentional and knowledge perspectives. We focus more specifically on Knowledge

Perspective which has not yet evolved into BP models. This perspective is semantically rich

and well founded is on the « core » domain ontologies. Besides, we evaluate the relevance

of some proposed concepts through a real SBP scenario from medical domain in the context

of the organization of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, knowledge identification, sensitive business process,

business process modeling, «core» domain ontologies.

1 Introduction

Nowadays, modern organizations become increasingly conscious of the necessity to formalize

and capitalize knowledge produced and used by their business processes (BPs). In this context,

business process modeling (BPM) has become crucial concern for any successful organizations

to improve the identification, acquisition, storage, dissemination, sharing, creation and (re) use of

their individual and organizational knowledge. Considering the large amount of knowledge to be

preserved and enhanced, such organizations must first identify and model the Sensitive Business

Processes (SBPs) which are likely to mobilize crucial knowledge on which it is necessary to

capitalize. In fact, the more organization’s BPs are sensitive, the more they can mobilize crucial

knowledge. Few existing research on Knowledge Management (KM)-BPM focusing on the

identification, analysis and modeling of SBPs in order to localize and identify the crucial

knowledge1. We quote: the Global Analysis METHodology (GAMETH) [1], the identifying

crucial knowledge methodology [2] and the Sensitive Organization's Process Identification

Methodology [3]. However, the critical phase of « SBPs modeling » has not been explicitly

1 The first facet of knowledge capitalization process [1] concerns problems bound to the identification and

localization of crucial knowledge, that is knowledge (explicit knowledge) and knowhow (tacit knowledge)

which are necessary for decision-making processes and for the progress of the essential processes which

constitute the heart of the activities of the company: it is necessary to identify them, to localize them, to

characterize them, to make cartographies of them, to estimate their economic value and to organize them into a

hierarchy.

addressed and studied in depth. Three major limitations can be emphasized. In particular, we

have noted the absence of: (i) a rigorous scientific approach of BPM for knowledge

identification, (ii) a rigorous conceptual specification for the SBP notion and clarity in the

representation of its important features, and (iii) expressiveness of BPM formalisms and BP

models with a knowledge dimension and other BPM aspects. In fact, the knowledge dimension

(i.e. the knowledge required to perform activities, the knowledge created as a result of BP

activities, the sources of knowledge, the explicit knowledge, the tacit knowledge, individual and

collective dimension of knowledge/activities, the knowledge flows between knowledge sources

and activities, the different opportunities of knowledge conversion, etc.) needed for performing

SBP is not explicitly represented, integrated and implemented in BP models and BPM

approaches. So, in order to remedy for these lacks, this paper aims to extend and consolidate

previous work [2, 3], mainly to reduce the gap between BPM and KM and address an important

problem that is not often dealt with by KM methodologies. Exactly, our mission aims to enrich

and optimize the operation of « modeling and representation of identified SBPs » in order to

increase the probability of localizing and identifying the crucial knowledge that requires

capitalization. This reduces the cost of the operation of capitalizing on knowledge.

This research work presents a conceptual specification of SBP, by proposing a new multi-

perspective meta-model of BPs representation to localize and identify the crucial knowledge,

entitled «BPM4KI: Business Process Meta-Model for Knowledge Identification». BPM4KI

intends to explicit and organize the key concepts and relationships that characterize a SBP. It

integrates all relevant aspects/dimensions relating to BPM-KM, i.e. the functional perspective,

the organizational perspective, the behavioral perspective, the informational perspective, the

intentional perspective and the knowledge perspective. In this paper, we focus more on the «

Knowledge Perspective» (or «Knowledge Dimension»), which is not yet explicited and

integrated into the BPs models. This perspective, modeled as an ontological conceptual pattern

(OCP) [4, 5], is semantically rich and well-based on «core» domain ontologies (which are based

on top of the DOLCE foundational ontology [6]. These ontologies provide a set of referential of

generic concepts and relationships semantically rich and consensual which we reused, firstly, to

broaden and deepen the elements of definition of Knowledge dimension, and on the other hand,

to characterize the useful concepts for a rigorous specification and an enriched modeling of the

SBPs.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents a specification of SBP,

describing its main features. Section 3 presents the central concepts that describe the knowledge

perspective of SBP necessary for the BPM. Section 4 illustrates the application and the relevance of

these concepts, based on a real case study. Section 5 concludes the paper and underlines some

future research topics.

2 Sensitive Business Processes

A SBP is a particular type of BP. It has its own characteristics that distinguish it from classical

BPs. Indeed, a SBP represents the core process of organization which constitutes the heart of the

organization’s activities [7–9].

2.1 Main characteristics of SBPs

A BP is described as « sensitive », if at least one of the following requirements is fulfilled:

It mobilizes « crucial knowledge », i.e. the most valuable/important knowledge on which it is

necessary to capitalize, in the sense that the risk of their loss and the cost of their (re)creation

is considered to be important, also their contribution to reach the firm objectives is very

important and their use duration is long.

It contains activities that valorize the acquisition, storage, dissemination, sharing, and creation

and (re) use of individual and organizational knowledge, in the sense that it mobilizes a large

diversity of knowledge sources consigning a great amount of very important heterogeneous

knowledge.

It is heavily dependent on the tacit knowledge embedded in the stakeholders’minds (i.e.

experts). In fact, this knowledge is mainly implicit, rarely explicit and disseminated the by

experts who hold it, and will therefore be difficult to identify, exploit and valorize by other

collaborators.

It includes a high number of critical activities [1–3] mobilizing crucial knowledge. In our

context, a critical activity mobilizes different types of knowledge: (i) imperfect individual and

collective knowledge (tacit and/or explicit) (i.e. missing, poorly mastered, incomplete,

uncertain, etc.) which are necessary for solving critical determining problems; (ii) a great

amount of heterogeneous knowledge recorded on multiple knowledge sources (dispersed and

sometimes lacking accessibility); (iii) expertise and/or rare knowledge held by a very small

number of experts (who carry out actions with high levels of experience, expertise, and

creativity); flexible knowledge owned by experts; (iv) very important tacit organizational

knowledge (like competences, abilities and practical experiences).

Its execution involves a large number of business domains (in terms of internal and external

organization unit/agents operating in the BP), having distinct experience and expertise levels.

It include a high number of collaborative organizational activities (inter/intra organizational)

that mobilize, exchange, share and generate new individual and collective knowledge that is

created by dynamic conversion of existing ones in the BP. So, it depends on knowledge flows

and transfer of data, information and knowledge objects between communicating process

participants.

It is typically unstructured or semi-structured. A flexible BP contains a very dynamic and

unpredictable control-flow, comprising complex activities that may frequently change over

time or at design-and run-time. Moreover, SBP participants may be influenced by or may have to

comply with constraints and rules that drive organizational actions performance and decision

making.

It possesses a high degree of dynamism in the objectives’ change associated to it, essentially,

in decision making context. The change of organizational objective leads to a new

organizational distal intention (which is necessary to control the SBP) and influences experts’

decision making.

Its contribution to reach strategic objectives of the organization is very important. Also, their

realization duration are important and often their costs are very high.

Due to those characteristics, modeling and organizing the knowledge involved in SBP is

relatively critical.

2.2 SBP Specification : A Multi-Perspective Meta-Model of BPs for Knowledge

Identification Based on Core Ontologies

In order to enrich and improve the SBP modeling, we propose a new multi-dimensional generic

meta-model of BP representation for knowledge identification, entitled «BPM4KI: Business

Process Meta-model for Knowledge Identification». This enriched meta-model serves two

purposes: (i) to deepen the elements and dimensions defining an SBP, by offering a coherent

conceptual specification for this BP type, and (ii) to develop a rich and expressive graphical

representation of SBPs to improve the localization and identification of crucial knowledge

mobilized and created by these processes. This new extended meta-model, which is a

continuation of previous works [7– 9], is well founded whose concepts (and the relationships

between them) are semantically enriched by the «core» domain ontologies. Specifically, the SBP

conceptualization is jointly supported, on the one hand, by the specialization of the DOLCE

foundational ontology [6], to specify and define the invariant generic BP concepts, including

SBPs, and on the other hand, by the conception of Ontological Conceptual Patterns (OCP) [4,5]

based on the reuse of ontological modules relating to the «core» domain ontologies [10–14]

(which were based on top of DOLCE).

The current version of BPM4KI offers a referential of generic concepts and semantic

relationships relevant to the BPM-KM domain, exploring the dynamic, the collaboration and the

knowledge aspects of the SBP in greater detail. It is categorized in six perspectives (or

dimensions) which are complementary and essential for a comprehensive and expressive

characterization and representation of a SBP:

Functional Perspective, represents the BP elements which are being performed. The main

concept that reflects this dimension is Action2. It includes: Individual Action,

Action of Collective, Action of Organization, Organizational

Action, Organizational Unit Action, Critical Organizational

Activity, Collaborative Organizational Activity, etc.

Organizational Perspective, represents the different participants (the organizational resources)

invoked in the execution of process elements as well as their affiliation. The basic element of

this perspective is Agentive Entity and includes: Collective, Organization,

Organization Unit, Human, Expert, Internal Agent, External Agent.

Behavioral perspective, depicts the concepts required to demonstrate the flows of activities

and information, coordination between different participants as well as concepts that effect,

trigger or control flows of activities. The basic and generic concepts of this perspective are

Control Flow, Flow Node, Control Node, Connecting Object, message

Flow, Conditional Control Flow, Non Conditional Control Flow, etc.

Informational perspective, describes the informational entities (such as input, output, physical

or data objects, artifacts, messages) which are generated, consumed, or exchanged within a

process/activity and between different participants. The following concepts are related to this

dimension: Resource, Material Resource, Immaterial Resource,

Informational Resource, Event, Contingency, Information Object

Input, Data Object Input, Information Object Output, Data Object

Output, Physical Artifact, Communication, Informal Exchange,

Message, Physical Knowledge Support, etc.

Intentional perspective, provides an overview perspective of the process and describes major

BP characteristics. It captures important BP context information in order to ensure the BP

flexibility. It comprises: Intention, Collective Distal Intention,

Organizational Distal Intention, Individual Objective,

Collective Objective, Organizational Objective, Strategic

Objective, Deliberate Action, Culminated Process, Client,

Sensitive Business Process, Internal Process, External Process,

Core Process, Strategic Process, etc. (which are some process types), etc.

Knowledge perspective, provides an overview perspective of the organizational and individual

knowledge mobilized and created by an BP/organization as well as the knowledge flow

proceeding within and between BPs/organizations. It addresses all relevant aspects related to

KM. This vantage presents the generic concepts: Knowledge, Capacity, Individual

Knowledge, Collective Knowledge, Internal Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge,

External Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Propositional Knowledge,

procedural Knowledge, Strategic Knowledge, Expert, Physical

Knowledge Support, CommunitativeInteraction, Knowledge Flow,

Socialization, Externalization, Explicitation, Combination, etc.

In the following, we describe our proposal of modeling of the « Perspective Knowledge» that

we have extended in greater detail.

2 With respect to our notation, the informal labels on BPM4KI concepts appear in the text in the Courrier

new font with First Capital Letters for the concepts and a javaLikeNotation for relations.

3 Knowledge Dimension in SBP Modeling

According to the literature review, the integration of KM into BPs was identified as the most

pressing as well as the most promising practical and theoretical task in KM [15]. Therefore,

several attempts have already been made to integrate the domain of KM and BPM, which consist

in introducing the process dimension into KM [16–19] or knowledge dimension into BP models

[20–27]. However, the integration of KM and BP orientation has not yet received sufficient

attention. In fact, the knowledge dimension needed for BPM is not explicitly represented,

integrated and implemented in BP models and BPM approaches/formalisms. To address this

research gap, the current paper proposes an extended knowledge perspective as the most relevant

BPM dimensions, which has not yet evolved into BP models, in order to enrich the graphical

representation of SBPs and improve the localization and identification of crucial knowledge

mobilized and created by these processes. This extended perspective highlights the concepts and

relationships needed to completely and adequately address SBP essential characteristics.

Knowledge perspective in BPM focuses on the knowledge flow and the dynamics of

acquisition, preservation, conversion, transfer, sharing, development, and (re) use of individual

and organizational knowledge within and between organizations. However, this perspective

considers the different types of knowledge (tacit/explicit dimension, declarative/procedural

dimension, etc.) mobilized and created by each type of activity related to the organization's BPs,

the different sources of knowledge, their localization and where they are usable or used, their

nature, their mode of dissemination/ organizational coverage (individual/collective dimension)

(individual/collective dimension), the different opportunity of knowledge conversion and

creation, etc.

Our proposal, presented in the form of an Ontological Conceptual Pattern (OCP) of

knowledge (see Fig. 1) is based on the reuse and the specification of central generic concepts

(and the relationships between them) defined in different ontological modules of the global and

consistent ontology OntoSpec3[10]: Capacity-OS, Action-OS, Action of Organization-OS,

Agentive Entity-OS, Partcipation-role-OS, Organization-OS, Function & Artefact-OS Resource-

OS, Communication-OS and Discourse_Message_Discoure_act-OS. Furthermore, we reused

some concepts proposed in the ontological modules IE&C (Inscription, Expression and

Conceptualization) [11], Know-How and Knowing-That [14]. These different core domain

ontologies are useful and sufficient to characterize the useful concepts for a rigorous specification

and an enriched modeling of Knowledge dimension of SBPs. Figure 1 organizes and explicit the

central concepts of the knowledge perspective (marked in gray), in addition to inter-aspects

relationships, giving a view of all relevant aspects of BPM4KI as a whole.

In the literature review, different connotations were associated with the term « Knowledge ».

A more general characterization of this concept is given in [28–31]: « A knowledge (or know-

how) is the capacity (or the disposition) to perform an action aiming to achieve a goal”.

Meanwhile, A Capacity is a state which enables to fulfill at least one Action Role (i.e. play some

role of participation in an Action)» [31]. Thus, we propose to characterize knowledge as follows:

A Knowledge is the Capacity which carriesOut (and affects) a type of Action

(i.e. an Organizational Action), which isBornedBy an Agentive Entity

(which can be a Human, a Collective, an Expert or an Organization).

Several features of Knowledge have been further described in the literature and this leads us to

classify it according to some dimensions (see Fig. 2). In this paper, we retain the following

dimensions: (a) the source of knowledge, (b) nature (content) of knowledge, (c) organizational

value of knowledge, and (d) organizational coverage of knowledge, which seem useful and

relevant to the context of our research work, the localization and identification of knowledge.

3 http://home.mis.u-picardie.fr/~site-ic/site/spip.php?article53

Behavioral Aspect

Functional Aspect

Intentional Aspect

Informational Aspect

Organizational Aspect

OrganizationalActivity

CriticalOrganizationalActivity

AgentiveEntity

Collective

Organization

CollaborativeOrganizationalActivityKnowledgeIntensiveActivity

Expert

{overlapping, incomplete}

Human *2..*

Knowledge

TacitKnowledge

PhysicalKnowledgeSupportExplicitKnowledge

{disjoint, complete}

hasForProperPart

isInternalizedIn

*isExternalizedIn

explicitablenowledge

isCombinedIn

isSocializedIn

isTransmittedIn

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State

Capacity

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ActionofOrganization

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Description InstructionalDescription

InternalKnowledge

AvailableKnowledge

External Knowledge

Familiarity Knowledge

Strategic Knowledge

hasForContent

isCarriedOutBy

Externalization

Internalization

InternalActor

participatesIn

CommunicativeInteraction

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Communication

Message

KnowledegeFlow

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Explicitation

Combination

MessageFlow

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hasForResult

hasForResult

hasForResult

hasForResult

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ProceduralKnowledde

PropositionalKnowledge

LatentKnowledge

ConsciousKnowledge

CollectiveKnowledge

IndividualKnowledge

OrganizationalKnowledge

Experiencer

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* *

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isExplicitedIn

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{disjoint, complete}

**

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*2..* hasForProperPart

{incomplete}

Fig. 1. Ontological Conceptual Pattern relating to the Knowledge Perspective/Dimension of SBP

Fig. 2. Knowledge is classified according to several dimensions: (a) source of knowledge, (b) nature of

knowledge, (c) organizational value of knowledge, (d) organizational coverage of knowledge. A descending edge

between two concepts represents a subsumption link. A horizontal line between edges from a father concept

indicates that the sibling concepts are incompatible.

(a) Source of knowledge. According to this dimension, we propose to make the distinction between

three types of knowledge: Internal Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge and External

Knowledge. Internal Knowledge (or implicit knowledge) isBornBy one or more

Persons (Humans). It is an implicit knowledge related to the human being, who exists in the head of

its holder, and includes innate or acquired competences and skills, his/her beliefs and aspirations. An

Internal Knowledge could be either Conscious knowledge, Latent knowledge or

Tacit Knowledge. Conscious knowledge is a conscious and intentional knowledge, is

cognitively available and may be made explicit easily. Latent knowledge has been typically

learning as a by-product and is not available consciously. It may be made explicit, for example in

situations, which are similar to the original learning situation, however. Tacit knowledge is

highly personal, developed and acquired through experiences and (cultural) socialization situations. It

is a non explainable knowledge, and is specific in its context and based on intuition and perception.

Explicit Knowledge concerns knowledge that is « made explicit » (explained) to the outside

world, e.g., through spoken language, but is still bound to the human being. External Knowledge

is detached from the human being and may be codified, formalized, transferable and usable at the

collective level of the organization, in the form of reusable storage media (e.g. documents) as part of

the organizational memory and independently of the subject which specified it. Available

Knowledge (either Explicit Knowledge or External Knowledge) isBornBy one or

more Physical Knowledge Supports (e.g. documents, computer system, etc.) enabling their

capitalization, dissemination and sharing among stakeholders of the organization. It is a way for

formalizing and storing Explicit/External Knowledge. A Physical Knowledge

Support is a Material Resource (informational resource), having source of knowledge

information interpreted and mobilized by the agents (operating in the BP) during the execution of their

activities (these supports transmit not only information, but also significance). From this viewpoint,

knowledge is useful for interpreting information while information is useful for transferring

knowledge.

(b) Nature of knowledge. We mainly distinguish between two categories of knowledge:

Propositional Knowledge and Procedural Knowledge. These types of knowledge are

dependent on each other and have some points in common with the typology presented above.

Propositional knowledge « Knowing-That / What » (also called declarative, factual or

descriptive knowledge [32] corresponds to theoretical knowledge, « knowledge » memorization of

facts, events, rules or principles of a given domain. They are usually made in a formal language.

Procedural knowledge « Knowing-How » corresponds to the Experience, the practical

knowledge, the knowledge on « how-to-do», the procedure of performing the Action, the « know-

how». These are dynamic knowledge that may develop only in a context of action. The authors [14]

have defined two terms: «Know-How » and « Knowing-That » as defined by Ryle [28] and [33], and

distinguished between the disposition to perform an action, and the belief state concerning a

description, which may be either factual or propositional. Moreover, the correspondence of these two

concepts of the core ontology COOK [14] with Procedural Knowledge and Propositional

knowledge concepts, leads us to propose the following characterization: A Propositional

knowledge is a Capacity (or disposition) which hasForTheme (concerns) an Action

while Propositional knowledge is a Belief State (which is a State) which

hasForTheme a Description.

(c) Organizational value of knowledge. We propose two classes of knowledge: Strategic

Knowledge and Familiarity Knowledge. Strategic knowledge «Know-Why/When»

(also called conditional or pragmatic knowledge) is meta-cognitive knowledge on optimal strategies

for structuring a problem-solving approach or for carry out an Action. They are also dynamic

knowledge, which correspond to the why and how of the action and, also, allow to determine the time

and context in which it is appropriate to use such a procedure or such knowledge. This type of

knowledge is one of the characteristics of expertise. Thus, a Strategic Knowledge

hasForTheme an Action. Finally, the Familiarity Knowledge (called environmental or

deep knowledge) is acquaintance with certain situations and environments; it also resembles aspects of

situational knowledge, i.e., knowledge about situations, which typically appear in particular domains.

(d) Organizational coverage of knowledge. We distinguish between two main classes: Individual

Knowledge and Collective Knowledge. An Individual Knowledge isBorneBy an

Individual (a Human). This knowledge includes, besides the intellectual capacity, the vision that

every individual holds of the organization to which he/she is affiliated, as well as the explicit

knowledge in the form of personal notes. As opposed to the individual, a Collective Knowledge

isBornBy a Collective. It's a knowledge sharable by several people. Their coverage can be

global, or partial which bound to a structure. An Organizational Knowledge is a

Collective Knowledge, which isBornBy an Organization. Thus, the different types of

knowledge, presented above, can be held individually or collectively, internally or externally. In the

first case, Knowledge areBornBy an Internal Actor, which is an Agentive Entity

(an Individual, a Collective, an Organizational Unit, or an Organization)

internal to an Organisation (affiliatedTo the same Organization). While in the

second case, Knowledge areBornBy an External Actor, which is an Agentive

Entity external to an Organisation (which is not affiliatedTo Organization).

Individual Latent Knowledge, Individual Tacit Knowledge, Individual

Procedural Knowledge, Individual Strategic Knowledge and Individual

Familiarity Knowledge areBornBy one Expert. It is linked to the mental models, talents,

innate or acquired experiences and skills, abilities, individual tricks, trades secrets, etc. While,

Collective Latent Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge Collective

Procedural Knowledge, Collective Strategic Knowledge and Collective

Familiarity Knowledge areBornBy at least two Experts (which constitute a

Collective) and mobilized by a Collective Action. It manifests itself in routines which may

be shared and exchanged through direct communication with others. Un Expert is an

Experiencier (which is an Agentive Entity ) who bears a Capacity To Perform a

type of Action with high levels of experience, expertise, performance, creativity and innovation.

Furthermore, Agentive Entity carriesOut one or more Communicative

Interactions, which hasForProperPart Communications. Within this type of action,

different types of Agentive Entity interact and exchange Knowledge through Messages

typically in an informal way (Informal Exchanges). Therefore, new Knowledge is developed,

which is the result of a sequence of operations which, starting from the private and non formalized

individual dimension of knowledge, determines the collective dimension (formalized and

disseminated) of knowledge. Therefore, we relied on the theory of knowledge creation [34], and we

propose to distinguish between five main modes/processes of conversion and transmission of different

types of knowledge4, namely: Socialization, Explicitation, Externalization,

Internalization and combination. Indeed, Individual Tacit Knowledge

isTransmittedIn Collective Tacit Knowledge through practice, sharing of experiences,

conscious or unconscious observation, constructive discussions, learning, etc. (in the context of a

Communicative Interaction). This is a matter of Socialisation. Socialisation is a

Deliberate Action, which hasForAgent a Collective (which hasForProperPart at

least two Humans), which isGeneratedBy Communication, and hasForResult new

TacitKnowledge (mental models). Socialisation may involve the participation of

External Actors. Knowledge Flows are needed to model the dynamics of Knowledge, i.e.,

all of organization, acquisition, conversion, transfer, sharing, development and usage of Knowledge

among the different sources of knowledge, participants and among BP activities.

Once modeled, the SBPs can be graphically represented, using the most popular standard for BPM,

BPMN 2.0 [35], in order to localize the knowledge that is mobilized and created by these processes.

We selected BPMN as the most suitable BPM notations for representing SBPs, because it incorporates

requirements for SBP modeling better than other BPM formalisms [9]. Nevertheless, despite its

strength representation, BPMN 2.0 does not yet provide support for SBP modeling. Some of its

concepts should be adapted and extended to be convenient for a rich and expressive representation of

SBPs. In fact, this notation does not explicitly support the key concepts of the Knowledge perspective

of BPM4KI (as Critical Organizational Activity, Explicit Knowledge,

Individual Tacit Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge, Expert, Distal

Intention, etc.). So, to overcoming the shortcomings of BPMN 2.0, this extension must take into

consideration, on the one hand, the knowledge dimension, and on the other hand, integrate the new

concepts of BPM4KI to represent issues relevant at the intersection of KM and BPM with a sufficient

level of details.

4 Case Study

We intend to apply the concepts proposed by the Knowledge perspective of BPM4KI meta-model on a

real case in the medical domain in the context of the Association of Protection of the Motor-disabled of

Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS). We aim to evaluate their potential to build an understandable, adequate and

expressive representation of SBP, in order to improve the localization and the identification of

knowledge. Particularly, we are interested in the early care of the disabled children with cerebral palsy

(CP). An depth analysis of this care has been made by [36]. Our main objective consists in providing

better localization and identification of relevant and pragmatic medical knowledge necessary to the

conduct of the medical care process of the disabled children with Cerebral Palsy, which is a SBP. In

this study, we take into consideration the results of experimentation of the methodology SOPIM

proposed by Turki et al. [3] in the context of ASHMS. We have opted for the «Process related to the

neuro-pediatric care of a child with CP» to illustrate the contributions of our enriched Knowledge

perspective of BPM4KI. Fig. 3 illustrates a SBP model extract of the neuropediatric consultation

process using BPMN 2.0 [35], enriched with the knowledge dimension. As stated above, this notation

does not, however, provide primitives to explicitly represent all relevant aspects related to knowledge

dimension in BP models. To remedy for the shortcomings, we tried to extend this notation and started

by integrating some specific graphical icons in the form of some BPMN modeling elements relating to

4 Socialization converts tacit knowledge of a person into tacit knowledge of another person. This may succeed by

exchange of experience or in a learning-by-doing situation. Explicitation is the internal process of a person, to make

internal knowledge of the latent or conscious type explicit, e.g., by articulation and formulation (in the conscious case)

or by using metaphors, analogies and models (in the latent case). Externalization converts from explicit knowledge to

external knowledge or information and leads to detached knowledge as seen from the perspective of the human being,

which can be kept in organizational memory systems. Internalization converts either external or explicit knowledge

into internal knowledge of the conscious or latent types. It leads to an integration of experiences and competences in

your own mental model. Finally, combination combines existing explicit or external knowledge in new forms.

several new BPM4KI concepts (see Fig. 3). During our experimentation, we have identified different

types of medical knowledge mobilized and created by each critical activity related to the SBP of neuro-

pediatric care.

For instance, the knowledge A2Kp1 « Synthesis of neurological abnormalities related to motor,

somatic and sensory development of the young child at risk and the different clinical signs » is

produced by the critical activity A2 « Clinical neurological examination». Note that this

materialized/externalized knowledge is created as a result of the activity execution by the Neuro-

Pediatrician, during which he interacts with information (i.e. source of knowledge information) related

to the child with CP (based on his tacit knowledge) to generate and communicate his own knowledge.

A2Kp1 is stored in the following physical media: the neurological assessment sheet, neuropsychological

assessment, the sensitive assessment sheet and the neuro-motor assessment. These physical media of

knowledge are located internally within the Neonatology service in the University Hospital Hedi

Chaker, precisely in the various archives drawers or patients’ directories. A2Kp1 is of a scientific,

technical and measure nature which is related to patients. It represents a collective explicit knowledge,

part of which can be represented in the form of an individual explicit knowledge recorded on the care

data collection sheet of the Neuropediatrician. This knowledge is imperfect (general, incomplete and

uncertain). A2Kp1 is mobilized by the activity A3 « Evaluation of intellectual functioning of young

child with CP ».

It is important to mention that not all BPM4KI concepts are applicable and must be instantiated in

every SBP scenario. Precisely, relevant tacit aspects could not be represented explicitly, such as: the

tacit knowledge embedded in the Neuropediatric's mind, the knowledge conversion and the knowledge

flows exchanged between communicating process participants and among activities, and the distal

intentions which are responsible for making Neuro-Pediatrician to perform any action and achieve an

organizational objective.

Fig. 3. Fragment of SBP model in BPMN related to the neuro-pediatric consultation of a child with CP

Therefore, the relevance of extending BP models with the knowledge dimension is manifold:

1. Enhance the localization and identification of the crucial knowledge mobilized and produced by

the critical activities: (i) Illustrating the knowledge and its sources that are necessary for the execution

of BP activities and are generated, created and/or modified as a results of activities. (ii) Illustrating the

knowledge localization (where knowledge can be obtained and clearly stated) as well as experts who

hold the (tacit) knowledge. (iii) Illustrating transfers of knowledge between sources, and among

activities as well as the different opportunities of knowledge conversion. (iv) Defining the knowledge

that is being captured or obtained from specific sources. (v) Giving an opportunity to improve

understanding about the knowledge usefulness, validity, and relevance for particular activities in a

SBP. (vi) Possibility to evaluate the amount of lost knowledge if a person-owner of knowledge- leaves

the organization.

2. A deeply characterizing of the identified knowledge to determine which ones are more crucial to

be exploited: (i) Illustrating the nature and degree of formalization of knowledge. (ii) Illustrating the

organizational coverage of knowledge, their quality, etc.

5 Conclusion and Perspectives

In this paper, we have addressed the problematic of localization and identification of crucial

knowledge. Therefore, we proposed a new multi-perspective meta-model of BPs representation, called

« BPM4KI » allowing a rigorous specification and rich and expressive graphical representation of

SBPs to improve the identification of knowledge mobilized and created by these processes. We

focused, specifically, on the description of the «Knowledge Perspective» needed for performing SBP.

This dimension modeled in the form of ontological conceptual pattern, is semantically rich and well-

based on «core» domain ontologies. Furthermore, we illustrated the application of some offered

concepts on a model of medical care process, using the BPMN 2.0 standard. There are several open

issues in this paper that we plan to address in the future to deepen the so-called problematic of

identification of crucial knowledge that is mobilized by SBPs. Further work is underway to deepen the

characterization of concepts relating to the notion of Sensitive Business Process and propose

semantically rich and consensual definitions of concepts and dimensions necessary for the

characterization and modeling of SBPs. In the medium term, we plan to offer a rigorous scientific

approach to help implement an extension of BPMN 2.0 notation to integrate core BPM4KI concepts,

and have a rich and expressive representation of SBPs.

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