Collaborative Knowledge Management in University Alliances with Information Models

Alliances between enterprises, such as Star Alliance, are a well-known phenomenon and have been subject of research for the last decades. Today, universities are also beginning to form alliances among themselves. Especially in the area of knowledge transfer alliances matter, as they create synergies, increase the visibility and allow universities to carry out projects that cannot be done by a single university. However, a University alliance creates new processes and interfaces between the member Universities. The management of such an alliance is a knowledge management challenge on its own. Therefore, this paper gathers the requirements on a University alliance and outlines how the business processes, that are specific for a University alliance, can be structured in a framework. The framework indicates which processes are important for an alliance and on which level they have to be addressed, on the level of a single University, first at each University and afterwards in the alliance or on alliance level only.