Towards Understanding the Use of Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS) to Support Business Processes

This paper revisits extant literature on Electronic Content Management Systems (ECMS) and contributions from the literature that provide insight how these technologies work. It confirms that there is a gap in the body of knowledge on the topic of ECMS-use. A few ECMS researchers point to two possible ways to understand and explore how ECMS is used in organizations. research on ECMS-use should: (1) Consider organization's business process structure as a starting point to understand ECMS-use, and (2) Examine the interaction between technoloaies, the organizational context, processes, business needs and users that shape certain ways of using these technologies. In addressing the first concern, a business operating model is used as a lens to understand how ECMS is used to support business processes of different types of organizations. Additionally, practice lens theory is used as a lens to better understand and explain the interaction between ECM technoloaies, organizational structure, processes and users that shape the ways in which ECMS is used. Using these theories, this study has developed a model that may be used by organizations to better understand: (1) the role of business process structures to maximize ECMS-use, and (2) organizational context and users that shape ECMS-use.