Abstract
Standards and models of processes – such as ISO/IEC 9000 standard for deploying quality management systems – have been developed for international organizations to promote the utilization of best managerial and engineering practices. However, given their conceptual density, a large number of concepts, composite concepts, and interrelationships, understanding them cannot be considered a trivial cognitive task for new readers and decision makers. Consequently, some IT-supported systems have been used to improve such an understanding. These tools provide basic searching services via keywords or catalog indices on monolithic text-based, hypertext technology, or multimedia documents. As a result, their system performance, correctness, user satisfaction, and lately understanding metrics, are still unsatisfactory. In this paper, we support the hypothesis that IT systems, where knowledge structures are explicitly codified, such as ontology-based knowledge management systems (o-KMS), can provide a plausible better solution. To support this hypothesis, we firstly report a conceptual survey on KMS and KM foundations (IT for KMS, KM Processes) to describe the capabilities of KMS and supporting needs for KM processes. Secondly, we describe the profiles of standards and models of process, and review related research on KMS. Finally, we present the problem-solution links, and discuss how o-KMS might provide a better support. We conclude that research results to date require further advance.