Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory: Evolutionary Paths and Future Advances was published in the Organizational Studies journal and was written by Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg von Krogh and Sven Voelpel and explains the process of “making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connection it o an organization’s knowledge system.” As knowledge is something that is embodied within the body, knowledge creation is something more than just the transmission of information. Information itself is never interpreted outside of a specific embodied context – a basic presupposition within the education process for becoming a teacher – and therefore more than just the expectation of immediate assimilation following consumption needs to be presumed when developing organizational knowledge within a firm.
SECI Model of Knowledge Conversation
Knowledge expands through a four-stage conversion process:
Socialization aims at sharing tacit knowledge among individuals.
Externalization aims at articulating tacit knowledge among individuals.
Combination aims at combining different entities of explicit knowledge.
Internalization aims at embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge.
The authors then use a Japanese concept, ba, to explain the different qualities of the spaces of encounter (originator -> context -> communication -> receiver) within which information and knowledge is transmitted.
There are for the authors three types of Ba – or Spaces of Meeting: Cyber, Interacting, and Originating.
Organizational epistemology is an important concept, and ought to be understood as a continuous process wherein the individual limits and constraints created through prior information and past learning is able to become newly actionable to the present job to be done. It views knowledge as something that “is oriented towards defining a situation so as to act on it rather than solving the depicted and manipulated pre-given problem.”
Knowledge, however, is fragile, and there are many ways that obstacles to coherence, creativity, sharing and innovation can emerge. Thus it is that an scientific method ought to be applied that relates to the needs of the business. Conversion, in which individuals externalize the experiences of knowledge, need not occur with every new bit information garnered by every individual, but an organizational design and knowledge creation and transfer processes should be in place to ensure that knowledge pertinent to Marketing is shared by Engineering should it have a potential use value. Because of this, the authors then look at standard business models to determine to an extent who needs what.
Hierarchy, Heterachy, and Hyper-Text
Hierarchy is what is most common in organizations where there is little variation in the work to be done – such as factories, fast-food restaurants, and construction. There is little variation that needs to be done, so there is little need from management for input from workers.
Heterarchy is categorized by its form. Assets and leadership are dispersed; communication is horizontal, and coordination informal and network based. reorganization results from “new demands for specialization and coordination as revealed by knowledge creation.”
Hyper-text – In a bureaucratic and hierarchical business system, this is a parallel project system layer that consists of a project teams that engaging in knowledge creating activities.
The authors’ connection between organizational knowledge, daily operations and the duties of company directors is clear: “providing accurate, timely and complete information for decision making is one of the most critical tasks of leadership.”
When understanding that the ba spaces are those where Middle managers are disseminating information, attitudes, etc. their role as knowledge producers, means for transmitting and ensuring that information was properly better comes into play. While reading this, I couldn’t help but think of my own training, both in the classroom as a teacher and in the classroom as a student discussing a different model of pedagogy and assessment.
The organization is in a state of becoming, moving between cycles of sense-giving from the top and sense-making in the middle, to sense-giving in the middle and sense-making at the top. There is no one “best model” for businesses, but rather they see that a business system, a project system and a knowledge system working in parallel that properly and efficiently coordinated and enables knowledge is the optimum for companies. This is and much further explanation on the topic gives rise to the “knowledge-based firm” concept that has recently come to dominate models used in Business education.
Outsider Knowledge Activists
Professional consultation is a common business practice as the focus of the business is sometimes so fixated on the task at hand they firms are unable internally to devote the attention required to weighing the benefits and liabilities of new practices and products. These people typically cause friction between themselves and the Performance Engine, but this is a “creative abrasion” that leads to new opportunities for knowledge creation. These people communicate future prospects and help provide overarching goals for the knowledge creation being developed in the different teams of an organization. They were the people with a “bird’s eye perspective” that helps firms achieve a new potentiality for being within the marketplace.
Leadership
One of the main directives for someone in a leadership position is to promote the SECI process. The primary functions of a leader is to:
1. Articulate knowledge visions and communicate them in and out of the organization.
2. Break down the values and visions into applicable concepts, images, and activities that direct the process of knowledge creation
3. Ensure that the knowledge system is being used, and considering how to help it evolve.
4. Define the organizational units, coordinate knowledge system layers.
5. Foster and nurture middle managers to act as knowledge producers
6. Provide space for ba and bring the right people together for it.
7. Search for supports, create internal groups and activities
8. Keep the bas energized and directed.
If it seems that if this were the case that all organizations and firms would be the same, however, they are not. The authors provide a telling explanation as to why that I quote here at length: “Organizations are dialectic phenomena that cannot be analyzed through a simple set of premises about behavior, be it profit or utility maximization, bounded rationality, altruism, human values, and social norms. The power of explanation lies in prudently combining insights from theories and research that draw upon different premises. In so doing we come closer to understanding the multifaceted nature of the organization.”