Cooperative Information Environments

Trends in the current business world towards decentralization, joint ventures and outsourcing of business functions are highlighting a need for new effective ways of sharing information and coordinating activities. One of the main tasks in an (Inter-) networked society is to support people in working together in an electronic world. The field of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) sets out to define and enable new ways of work in the area of cooperative knowledge generation. But up to now there are only a few products which have penetrated the market. One of the main tasks in an (Inter-) networked society is to support people in working together in an electronic world. Providing the right piece of knowledge to the right person at the right time is a primary goal of knowledge management. Norms and conventions that have been established in an electronic world have to be obeyed. Work in the areas of business process management and of computer supported cooperative work holds a high potential for contributing to this goal, but so far, there are only few interactions among these fields. Thus, although innovative systems for business process support require the convergence and integration of tools and techniques from both areas. This paper describes a framework for knowledge co-production. Our current project investigates the contribution of tele-collaboration systems for the co-production of knowledge in teams and communities.