A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration, School of Management

Research report (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005

Business Process Improvement (BPI) has been acknowledged to generate significant economic benefits for organizations and also enhance business performance in fulfilling customer's needs. Many organizations realized the need to improve their processes in order to increase customer's satisfaction. However, a study revealed that only as much as 30% of such BPI effort produced good result; thereby, compelling more research studies on the appropriate BPI methodology. On the other hand, many studies revealed that most BPI methods overlooked people's role as the driver of this process. Integration of Communities of Practice (CoP) in BPI project is something worth investigating, since CoP highly involves people behind the processes and act as the starting point of organizational learning, with a potential to complement BPI methodology. This study will be based on a case study of a BPI project in an organization, looking at how CoP works in a BPI project as part of the overall BPI methodology, how functional silos can be broken down to allow knowledge flow and what are potential impacts of CoP on BPI outcomes.