Business ProcessManagement and Social Networks: A Case Study in an Airline Organization

Business Process Management (BPM) is not a new concept as Social Networks and Social BPM that are starting to get as much attention as previous, both on academic contexts and in organizations. Social Networks are evolving and, although there is recognition of the importance that they have in people’s life, there isn’t much information or analysis that seek to interpreting and showing reality about SNs in organizations’ life. There is also a gap in relating Social BPM with what, for us, should be its main source of information, Social Networks. Organizations are discovering that Social BPM can also help organizations to achieve competitive advantage. So, relating these three subjects is relevant, since it can help organizations understand how they can use the knowledge from its stakeholders to improve their business processes. We conducted a qualitative case study on a Portuguese airline and were able to show that they not only interfere and interact with each other as they can be used (and were) to improve results, reduce costs and achieve competitive advantage.