Workflow-centric information distribution through e-mail

Organizations require ways to efficiently distribute information such as ne ws releases, seminar announcements, and memos. While the machinery for info rmation storage, manipulation, and retrieval exists, research dealing direc tly with its distribution in an organizational context is scarce. In this p aper, we address this need by first examining the pros and cons of the conv entional "mailing lists" approach and then proposing new workflow mechanism s that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of information distribution through e-mail. The proposed approach is relevant to other information dis tribution approaches beyond e-mail. The main contributions of this study in clude: (1) offering a workflow perspective on organizational information di stribution; (2) analysis of workflows in two new information distribution m ethods based on dynamic mailing lists and profile matching, respectively; a nd (3) proposing a new way of matching supply and demand of information tha t extends existing information filtering algorithms.